All dogmatic teaching in golf is wrong. There are two or three essential principles as we have called them—the keeping of the still head, the fixed centre in the body, the eye on the ball, and such like—which must be obeyed under the certain penalty of failure, because these might be said to be the laws of Nature as applied to golf, and have nothing to do with the eccentricities of human method. But, these being properly respected, there are innumerable ways of building upon them structures of golf which, in the goodness of results in the matter of getting threes and fours and winning the holes, are much the same at the finish. One of the structures may be precise, another may be plain, a third may be ornate, and a fourth may be rough and vulgar. Yet in efficiency and in results they may be just the same, and in most cases the man is led to his style of golf building largely by his own temperamental case. So long as the essential principles are observed in each case, being the same always but kept hidden in the recesses of the building, many things may be done that the books do not teach. The books are valuable to the utmost for their suggestions and for bringing the player back to his base, as it were, when he has wandered too far in his explorations, piled theory on theory and got his game into the most hopeless tangle. For corrective purposes they are in this way quite essential. They stand for the conventions and for the middle ways; they enable us to make a fresh start. And the golfer is always making fresh starts. What is the cherished belief of to-day is abandoned next week, the discovery just made and looked upon as solving the last problem that keeps the handicap man away from scratch, is found later to be a temporary convenience only and to be dependent on something else in the system of a highly fleeting and uncertain kind. These beginnings, this starting over again with increased hope, add always to the pleasure.
What players need to remember above all things is that the games of no two men are quite alike, any more than the men themselves are quite alike, and that among the very best the widest dissimilarities exist, that the best game that any man can possibly play is not one copied from others, but that game which is his very own, the one built up on his physical, intellectual, and mental peculiarities. Every man has a game of his own somewhere which is quite different from any other, and that game, when he can play it, will be more effective than any other that he could play. What he has to do, therefore, is to find out that game in all its peculiarities, and this is what the explorer and investigator is constantly trying to achieve. He is finding out the mysteries not of the game in general, as he sometimes imagines, but of his own game, and the more he discovers the better is he as a golfer. Surely there is proof enough of the absolute soundness of this proposition in the fact that the discoveries as they are made, meaning not those which are found later to be worthless, but those which become established in the permanent system and are invaluable, are often absolutely opposite to those made in another case and which become permanent in the same way. Why, even the champions differ more widely than any others—yet one remembers that this should not be a matter of surprise, but something that by this argument is quite inevitable. The champions have been marvellously successful in the mining of their own golfing seams, and that is the chief reason why they are champions. And all this helps to make golf the game it is—the eternal finding out, the progress, with its occasional set-backs, towards the discovery, the completion of the golfing self. I have only met one man in my life who has golfed and never found anything out, and that was Mr. John Burns, the Minister of State, who assured me that once in the old days of the Tooting Bec course he was persuaded by a number of political persons to go with them to play the game there one day. He had never handled a golf club in his life, but having some practical knowledge of cricket, felt that golf could not offer any serious hindrance to him. Consequently he agreed to take his part in a foursome, and in the progress of this match usually drove the best ball, with the result that his side was well victorious. There seemed nothing in his game that needed improvement. Herein we observe Mr. Burns displayed many of the qualities of the highest statesmanship, but he rose majestically in his determination that from that day he would never play golf again, much as he liked it, and he never has. He has these three distinctions—that he has played golf once and once only in his life; that being a golfer, as all are who are once initiated, he has never lost a match; and that he has never found anything out. I shall hope to be present at the second game he plays, the resolution having broken down, and then we shall see discoveries made.
But once again, "Golfer, know thyself" is the supreme moral drawn from the experiences of the players who have golfed and studied most. Every golfer worth the name has found out hundreds of things and hopes to find many more; some of them are quite different from any of the other things that have been found out; he has his own private collection, and in it almost any person might find something that might with a little alteration be added to his own. So I remember that when we came up out of Spain, where the golfers are in that happy state that they have at this present stage almost more to discover than any other golfers in the world, a new spring season was beginning in the homeland of the game and all players were looking over their stock of knowledge and seeing what they had found out in the most recent times. It occurred to me then to send out a demand to a number of good players whom I knew for their enthusiasm, for their individualism and their strength of mind, and for their conscientious investigations, and ask them what they had lately discovered in an original kind of way which had beyond question materially improved their game. The answers were enlightening, and some of them, which I may quote, are worth pondering upon. One of the best players of my acquaintance sent to say that he had made a discovery, which, applied as a resolution, had done him more good than any other half-dozen he had ever thought of. The essence of the new idea was that on the teeing ground especially, and when approaching his ball through the green, he would see to it that the stepping of the feet, the movements of the arms, hands—everything involving action—should be as slow and deliberate as possible, even the very speech itself, for the reason that this slow sureness created an irresistible tendency in the golfing action that was to follow, the back-swing was then slow and deliberate, and the whole movement was harmonious and precise. The probable value of this idea is suggested by the fact that the man who is slow and deliberate in his waggling—not meaning one who prolongs it unduly or does it in a hesitating way—generally does his swinging better. Another player said the best discovery he had ever made was the idea of imagining his weight during upswinging to be on his left foot without really throwing it there, at the same time holding his legs a little more stiffly than had been his wont and keeping his heels on the ground as long as he could. By these things, which could all be grasped in the one general idea of making himself conscious of his legs all the time, he has come by a firmness and steadiness of system that have added enormously to his driving capacity; in fact, it has converted him from being a man who could not drive at all to a very good driver indeed.
I remember that once I was watching Taylor teaching a scratch man and giving him hints for curing some considerable cutting and slicing to which he was addicted. The champion turned round to us and said that one of them was the best tip he had ever suggested in his life. It is the simplest thing. In addressing the ball he would have the patient turn over the face of the driver until that face is positively hanging over from the top, pointing to the turf, at such a fearsome angle—no limit to it—as to make it seem impossible to do anything but smother the ball when coming down on to it. The back-swing has to be begun with the face in this threatening situation. The truth is that the nervous fear that it inspires is the secret of the success of the method. The man believes that if he comes down on to the ball like that there will be a horrible disaster, and all the time in the down-swing he is subconsciously (another to that long list of most important subconscious movements) making corrections and allowances, and his wrists are doing a twist to get the club right by the time of impact. It is this wrist action, with the left hand managing it, that is wanted, and the arm action that it induces. The club reaches the ball properly, and the ball goes off without a slice. If sometimes it is smothered it does not matter; the cure will take effect in time. But, you say, you do not want to go on for ever addressing the ball in this seemingly grotesque way. No; but, again subconsciously, when the ball is being hit and driven properly and the arm and wrist action become natural, there is a sure tendency towards a settling down to normal ways, and without the man bothering about it any more the club will gradually get itself straight.
CHAPTER XV
THE SUPERIORITY OF BRITISH LINKS, AND A MASTERPIECE OF KENT, WITH SOME SYSTEMS AND MORALS FOR HOLIDAY GOLF.
The chief and essential difference between golf in Britain and all other places in the world, as everybody feels on coming home to it after wanderings with clubs abroad, is that here in the home of the game it is "the real thing" as nowhere else. Climate, soil, history and sentiment, and the temperament of the people have combined to make golf here a thing that foreign people who have never seen and enjoyed it cannot imagine. It is not only that its excellence is so great, but its variety so infinite; and perhaps it is because of that excellence and variety that, human nature being in such a constant state of discontent, our people in these days are so much concerned with problems of architecture and the attainment of ideals which vary much with individuals and cause incessant wrangling. It is when we are far away that we think most of the magnificence of the courses on the western seaboard of Scotland—Prestwick, Troon, and Turnberry among them, with Machrihanish and Islay in more lonesome parts—of the wealth of golf in that East Lothian district that is so amazingly crowded with fine links, of the splendid strength of such as Hoylake and others in Cheshire and Lancashire, of our own east coast with such jewels as Brancaster set in it, of that marvellous trinity of courses on the Kentish seaboard, which as a golfing land has surely not its match in the world—Sandwich, Deal, and Prince's, in the group—of Littlestone and Rye along the southern coast, and then in the west such a glorious golfing ground as Westward Ho! And there is Wales with its pretty and excellent Porthcawl, Ashburnham, and many more, and Ireland also with its great Dublin courses, Portmarnock and Dollymount, and then sweet Newcastle in county Down, and bold Portrush.
Indeed there are no others like the British courses, and it is always a tremendous speculation with any golfer of experience as to which he likes the best. When he comes to make it he has to separate in his mind the feelings of admiration and those of affection, for it commonly happens, if the judgment is reasonably good, that one may have the utmost admiration for some particular course, for its unimpeachable architecture based so well on perfect theory and the attempt always to make the punishment fit the crime and award stern justice, and yet not greatly delight to play upon it because in a way that sometimes he can hardly understand it does not give him his utmost pleasure. Here again the inexplicable emotions settle it. But in that matter of "justice" which seems so much to be the ideal of new architects, there comes the reflection in the ordinary golfer's mind sometimes as to whether golf, not really being a game of justice now, would be better if it were one, whether with so much that is unfair and tantalising removed from it the game would be half so good. Surely in no fine sport is there always exact justice done, and if it be made an ideal is it not possible that the nearer such ideal is approached the poorer may become the sport, not perhaps in regular proportion but in approximate effect? Golf is a game of Nature after all, and Nature in some ways does not always stick to justice. One may ponder upon what Anatole France once said about this justice. "In the vulgar sense," he wrote, "it is the most melancholy of virtues. Nobody desires it. Faith opposes it by grace and Nature by love. It is enough for a man to call himself just for him to inspire a genuine repulsion. Justice is held in horror by things animate and inanimate. In the social order it is only a machine, indispensable doubtless, and for that reason respectable, but beyond question cruel since it has no other function than to punish, and because it sets jailers and executioners at work." And perhaps it may be said that golf has little enough in principle to do with justice either; and we have seen into what perplexities the good authorities of St. Andrews have fallen by their vain endeavour to make a code of laws that would settle the just dues of every golfer in every circumstance. Nature in her variety has contrived to beat them all continually. Perhaps it may be the same with the construction of courses, but the end of all golfers' endeavour, however much it may be criticised, is the good of the game, and it is generally achieved.