I presume Bishop was thinking that Wallace would better be employed in running a mowing machine.
"The Scotch method of making a full drive," said Wallace, facing his interested little audience, and speaking with more enthusiasm than was his wont, "or, if you prefer it, the St. Andrews style, is distinguished from most types by what might be termed its exaggerated freedom. It is a full, free swing with an abandoned follow through. It probably comes from the confidence which has been handed down from generations of golf-playing people. The Scotch are a conservative and deliberate people in most things, but the way they seem to hit a golf ball gives to most observers the impression of carelessness and lack of considered effort. That, I should say," he concluded, with a droll smile, "is enough for the preacher."
[Illustration: "I have never seen a more perfect shot">[
I felt mortally certain Wallace would make a failure of that first shot, and he told me later he was rather nervous, but he took no unnecessary chances.
He used a three-quarter swing—at least so it appeared to me—such a one I should employ to drive a low ball about one hundred and fifty yards. He seemed to put no effort into it, but the result proved there was not an ounce of misapplied energy. It all seemed unstudied, but I knew that every muscle and sinew of his lithe and well-proportioned body was working to the end that the face of his club should not swerve by one hair's breadth from the course he had planned for it.
It was the ball which we less-favoured golfers dream shall some day be ours to command; the ball which starts low, rises in a concave curve, and ends its trajectory in a slight slant to the left—the low, hooked ball. It was not a phenomenally long drive; about two hundred yards, I should say, but for the apparent effort expended I have never seen a more perfect shot.
"Why in thunder don't you hit it hard, Wallace?" demanded Bishop. "Soak it, man, soak it! That was only a love tap."
I would rather have stood in the shoes of that "hired man," and listened to the comments of those three girls, than to rival the eloquence of Demosthenes, and withstand the surges of the applause of admiring thousands.
"Let me drive two or three easy ones, Mr. Bishop," Wallace said, placing another ball on the turf, "and then I will press a bit, and see if I have lost the feel of a full swing."
It was a wonderful exhibition of clean, long driving. He teed a dozen balls, and I doubt if one of them fell fifteen yards outside the line of the lone walnut tree which had been selected as the target. The ground was fairly level, and Mr. Bishop and I paced the distance to the outer ball. We agreed that it was about two hundred and forty yards from the point driven, and seven of the twelve balls were found within a radius of fifteen yards. In fact all of them would have been on or near the edge of a large putting green.