In a primitive way also it was played in America in the seventeenth century, and, as in the homeland, some of the earliest references to it that remain take the form of warnings of the punishments accruing to players who departed from such severe restrictions as were imposed. It was not proclaimed what advantages would be yielded men who played, as is done to-day, but what grievous penalties they should suffer if they played it when and where they should not, and alas! the times and places that were forbidden appeared to be many in proportion to those when the game might be enjoyed by those who liked it. Then as now, and in America as in happy England, those who were not of golf were against it, and bitterly. There were jealousies then as ever since. There were those often-quoted Laws and Ordinances of the New Netherlands of 1659 in which, because of a complaint by the burghers of Fort Orange and the village of Berwyck about the damage done to their windows and the danger to which they were exposed of being wounded by persons who played golf along the streets, the golfers were threatened of consequences to come. Then clearly the game was played in South Carolina in 1788, for at that time an advertisement appeared in a local newspaper thus: "Anniversary of the South Carolina Golf Club will be held at Williams's Coffee House on Thursday, 29th instant, when members are requested to attend at 2 o'clock precisely, that the business of the Club may be transacted before dinner." Here there is a clear indication of the close connection maintained between the playing of the game and the social ceremonies about the dinner-table that were held by the golfers on the same day in the way that was practised by the early golfers of the Scottish centres and of Blackheath. For many years afterwards these meetings of the South Carolina Golf Club were held at the club-house on what was known as "Harton's Green," which is now in the heart of Charleston. Perhaps this was the first golf club-house in America, and if that were so it shared the fate of pioneer establishments in many other places where towns have widened and gathered in the outlying lands. There is also preserved in the archives the form of invitation that was sent to Miss Eliza Johnston to attend the ball of the Savannah Golf Club at the Exchange hall in that city in December 1811. And then American golf seems to have lapsed and slept like Van Winkle in the Catskills until the time of the great regeneration came near the end of last century. One does not come now to make a history of American golf, but only to indicate that new and republican America also has something in the way of golf traditions.
§
The real beginning of American golf was made, as you may know, out at Yonkers up the Hudson, and Mr. John Reid, the elder, is rightly regarded as the father of American golf. Such recognition being of long standing and his claims being incontestable, he was again publicly and officially proclaimed as such at the silver jubilee celebration that was held in New York on November 19, 1913. That was twenty-five years from the time when the game was really set going in the States. One night I sat over a log fire in a club-house in Massachusetts and heard the story of the foundation by his father from the lips of Mr. John Reid, the younger, secretary of the United States Golf Association. He told me how his father and Robert Lockhart, who went to the same school in Scotland, came to America together; how Lockhart who, as a buyer of goods, had to pay periodical visits to his homeland, talked of the strange game that was played there; how Mr. Reid became interested and asked for clubs and balls to be brought across the water; how he tried the swings and strokes in a field by their house at Yonkers, the son "fielding" for the father; how the captain of a steamer was persuaded to bring another set of clubs over with him, and how irons were thereafter cast in America. Then he told me how other people, few but keen, were attracted to this new pastime that the Reids were trying, and how the first little club was formed here at Yonkers in November 1888, and called the St. Andrews Golf Club. They were as the golfing fathers. I learned how the members came to be known as the Apple Tree Gang because of the tree near to the first hole on which they hung their coats; how six holes were laid out at the beginning on Mr. Reid's land, his house being used as a club-house; how he gave a medal which was the first prize ever put up for competition in America—and it was for an annual thirty-six holes stroke competition—and how it was won for eleven years, three in succession, by Mr. George Sands. Those were days of consequence. From that little beginning the St. Andrews Golf Club of Yonkers, after many changes and enlargements, has risen to a place of importance and honour in American golf.
These little histories and traditions of American golf do become attractive as one probes more deeply into them. It was in Massachusetts that the most remarkable thing that has ever taken place in the history of the game on the other side of the Atlantic, or anywhere perhaps—meaning, of course, the Ouimet triumph—happened lately, and I have been much attracted to the story of the beginning of golf in that part of the American world, and not less so when I see that the start was made such a very little while before the birth of the boy who won that great championship at Brookline. American golf and Ouimet have grown up together. One finds that in the summer of 1892 a young lady from Pau went on a visit to Mr. Arthur Hunnewell, at Wellesley, Mass., and took with her a set of golf clubs and balls. They had been playing the game for a long time past at Pau, but it was only just being started in other parts of France. After Yonkers it had been reproduced at Shinnecock and one or two other places, but so far Massachusetts had not known it. The girl showed Mr. Hunnewell how the clubs were used, and some relatives of his, owning adjacent estates and being fond of outdoor pastimes, watched and were won quickly to the game. On the first of June Mr. Hunnewell wrote down in his diary, "F. B. arrived to-day from Europe"; and on the fifteenth of September, "We are getting quite excited about golf." A fortnight later he wrote that "J. B. is here and plays golf all day." I calculate it as a coincidence worth remark that twenty-one years afterwards, to the month and to the week, Mr. Ouimet won the great championship.
Many of Mr. Hunnewell's friends were invited to come and attempt the game at his place, which they did accordingly and fell in love with it. He had fashioned a course of seven holes of moderate length over undulating lawns and some park-land. The actual holes consisted of five-inch flower-pots sunk in the turf, and the hazards were avenues, clumps of trees, beds of rhododendrons, an aviary, a greenhouse, and an occasional drawing-room window, as it is facetiously remarked by Mr. Lawrence Curtis, who became the first secretary of the golf committee of the Country Club, and to whose account of these happenings I am indebted for my notes upon them. Mr. Curtis, seeing the fascination that the game exercised upon all who became acquainted with it, wrote a letter to the executive council of the Country Club informing them of it, suggesting that it was a pastime that might very well be brought within the scope of the club, and that the cost of an experimental course need not exceed some fifty dollars. The suggestion was backed by several members and the council agreed, the course being laid out in the spring of the following year. The home hole was placed on a lawn in front of the club-house which was soon discovered to be a very dangerous place for it, so that it had to be removed. Almost immediately the game became a strong attraction at the Country Club, new members came along in droves because of it, and it has flourished ever since. The example of this powerful club was followed at the Essex County Club at Manchester, then just being begun. Mr. Herbert Leeds, now so closely and honourably associated with Myopia, won the Country Club's championship in 1893 with a score for eighteen holes of 109, Mr. Curtis being next with 110; and that summer a Country Club side won a team tournament that was played at Tuxedo against the St. Andrews and Tuxedo Clubs. And afterwards all went very well indeed.
And while I write in this way of the grand pioneering work that was done in those days when champions of the present time were being born and trained, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Mr. Edward Blackwell, in which he told me of his going out to California in 1886 and staying there for six years. His people had bought some land in those western parts, and he and his two brothers went out there to convert it from barley to a vineyard. Mr. Blackwell is a very great golfer to-day, but considering the gutty ball and circumstances in general, he was, relatively to his contemporaries, as great then. Only about a week before he sailed for California a match was arranged between him and Jack Simpson, who had gained the Open Championship the previous year, and Mr. Blackwell won that match at the last of the thirty-six holes that were played. Out in California there was plenty of hard work to do on the land and good sport with the gun, but, of course, there was no golf. Mr. Blackwell's thoughts frequently turned towards it, and he missed it very much. He considered the possibilities and found that they were practically non-existent, for the country round about was too hopelessly rough for laying out any sort of holes. So he never saw a golf club and never hit a ball during those six years, but for all that he won the King William IV. medal at the autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club immediately on his return. Then he went back to California and did not see club or ball for another five years. Some of us could almost wish he had made some sort of course out there in California and become the first golfer of that far west, for he would have been so good to have been a pioneer, and golf has flourished there exceedingly since then. California sends men to championships. It would have given a special piquancy to that fateful amateur championship final at Sandwich in 1904 when Mr. Blackwell was his country's last hope against America's Mr. Walter Travis, and as it happened he was not quite equal to the occasion, for the American captured four holes at the start with his amazing putting, and he won by as many at the end.
That was a great day for American golf, a kind of consummation it was, and I shall never forget the queer sensation that filled the atmosphere on the St. George's course, nor the dumb feeling, not exactly of dismay but of incomprehension, there was at the end. As to the first of these sensations I believe that nearly everybody felt—without knowing why exactly, for comparatively few had noticed his play until he got to the fourth or fifth rounds and was appreciated as dangerous—that the American player was nearly sure to win, that nothing could stop him from winning. It was a conviction. Certainly Mr. Travis's wonderful putting had created a very deep impression, but if he had been a British player I think the feeling would have arisen that putting like that, which had been continued for the best part of a week, would be sure to give out before the end. Take the case, for instance, of Mr. Aylmer in the championship of 1910 at Hoylake. He had been putting in the most amazing manner all the time, and holing them from everywhere, but nobody had any confidence in his ability to beat Mr. John Ball in the final, and he collapsed utterly. Of course, Mr. Aylmer then had not the tremendous fighting power and pertinacity of Mr. Travis in match play, qualities of their kind which I have only seen equalled by a successor of his in the American championship roll, Mr. Jerome Travers, and to beat Mr. Ball at Hoylake is a different matter from beating Mr. Blackwell at Sandwich. But then they were saying that Mr. Aylmer could not go much farther even when he was only at about the third round, and as for Mr. Ball at Hoylake there was a considerable feeling among golfers about that time that the old champion could not go on defying the law of averages any longer, and that there could be no more championships for him. I confess that I rather shared this view, held in a superstitious sort of way, but now that Mr. John has clapped another championship on to that Hoylake affair, we have given him up. There is no reason why he should not win another eight! However, when the Scot and the American teed up that fateful morning there was a disposition to be sorry for Mr. Blackwell, and a kind of hope that the end might be painless. In the circumstances Mr. Blackwell's performance in losing nothing more after losing four of the first five holes was as good as it could be. He kept the pump working splendidly.
The truth is that he was by no means so gloomy as his friends about his prospects, as he told me afterwards. He said he thought he had a good chance of winning, and did not believe he would get beaten. He wished, however, that the tees had been farther back so that his long driving would have given him a better advantage. Two things about his opponent impressed him very much, one, of course, being his astonishing putting and the other his silence. But then, of course, one does not work one's way into a final of a championship for conversational purposes, or for debating the merits of the sixth sub-section of one of the rules of golf. When the deed was done completely Mr. Blackwell joined the converts who departed from the old prejudice and raided Tom Vardon's shop for Schenectady putters, with which they practised, and marvelled as the sun was setting on the first day that any but a British player had won a British golf championship. With that victory the first era in modern American golf, not counting the prehistoric times of golf in Charleston and the Indians' games, came to an end. America had made good. Now she became a power.
The second era lasted nine years and was one in which she gradually came to be taken more seriously. She suffered a set-back of sorts when Mr. Harold Hilton won the American Amateur Championship at Apawamis in 1911, but there were some circumstances attending that victory at the thirty-seventh hole which were rather galling to the Americans, and they behaved well in saying so little about them. Mr. Hilton ran away with the match in the final, as it appeared, and Mr. Fred Herreshoff in the afternoon was offered about the most forlorn hope that golfer ever had to lighten his way for him. He brightened it up and made it thoroughly serviceable, and was distinctly unlucky in being beaten at the extra tie hole when Mr. Hilton's bad second shot cannoned off the famous rock to the right and went kindly to the putting green instead of getting into a hopeless place. It has been said that even if Mr. Hilton's shot was lucky, Mr. Herreshoff played the hole so badly that he hardly deserved to win it even if he was hardly treated by losing. But it is forgotten that it was match play, and that what one man does affects the other's game, and Mr. Herreshoff told me once, long after, that the American crowd, which is supposed erroneously to be many shots to the advantage of an American playing against an Englishman, on that occasion misled and upset him. It cheered for Mr. Hilton at the wrong time and for the wrong thing, and led to Mr. Herreshoff making a hash of a most fateful stroke. This era of American golf came to an end with the amazing victory by Mr. Ouimet at Brookline.
The present state of things is very remarkable, and I have found the study of it very interesting during two long golfing expeditions through the United States, when I have visited many of the chief American clubs, met and made friends with men who are at the head of American golf and the most distinguished players, and in every way gained a good practical knowledge of the amazing progress of the game in this country. The Englishman who visits America and is not a golfer suffers a loss that he must regret always afterwards. To strangers in general the Americans in their own country are kindly and hospitable. That touch of carelessness and arrogance which is sometimes noticed in the wandering American when he is "doing Europe" is not in evidence among good Americans when they are at home, always provided that the Englishman has the good sense and manners—which one regrets to say is not always the case—to remember that when in the house of his host it is not good taste to praise his own for its superiority in divers ways. Pay the American now and then, and with proper delicacy, that little compliment that is so very well deserved about the magnificence of his achievement in making a country like that in such a short space of time, and about the excellence of many of his established systems. It is a compliment that can and should be paid with the most absolute sincerity. The American has the right to be proud of his own country, and we should be proud of the American, for that his blood is much the same as ours—trite observations, no doubt, but commonly disregarded. Then with all his fancy hustle and his tarnation smartness, the American is at bottom rather a sentimental man (perhaps it is because he has to be so very businesslike most times that he is liable to a sharp reaction at any good chance) and he is touched with signs of genuine good feeling towards him and an appreciation of what he has done. Thereupon in a softened voice he will tell of his weaknesses, and of his appreciation of the greatness of mother England, and he will play the host in a more thorough and warm-hearted way than any other man on earth will or can. The ordinary non-golfing visitor may find out many of these things, and have his own good time in his simple way, but even in the freest countries there are often social omissions, accidents, and disasters when there is not good common ground for meeting and friends in waiting, and it is very possible to go to America and fail in the way of holiday. The man who visits as a golfer, enters at once into joys of existence and the most friendly companionship. I have visited clubs in many parts of the country, and have made good and abiding friends among countless golfers, and it is but a poor expression of my feelings to say that I am very appreciative and deeply grateful. If, therefore, for anything whatever I should criticise the golf of the country I hope that American golfers will believe that in my comments there is no trace of adverse prejudice.