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Those who in the most dispassionate frame of mind have considered carefully all the points that should count the most and detached themselves as well as they might from their private and inexplicable preference have generally come to the conclusion that there are three courses in this great golfing country of ours that are somewhat better than all the rest in their golfing quality. One of them is old St. Andrews, another of them is middle-aged Westward Ho! and the third is the youthful Prince's at Sandwich. Considered as the perfect course, weighing point against point, a jury of the best critics might have difficulty in coming to any other decision than that architecturally, for the real magnificence of its golfing value, the great creation of Mr. Mallaby-Deeley on the golfing land by Pegwell Bay is supreme. Here ten years ago there was nothing but a barren waste of sandhills, just as they had been, as it seemed, since the very beginning of things—lonesome, useless, forgotten. Then it was realised that what was good for nothing else was best of all for golf. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley saw it and understood, and now hereabouts the land is comparatively priceless so much is it coveted by the golfers, who also now understand as they see. Other great courses have been the productions of a long period of time, improvements continually on an original structure of the crudest kind. Westward Ho! was not made in a season, nor in many seasons. Only recently some of its most delightful touches have been added to it. St. Andrews was the work of generations. But Prince's, though it has been appreciably changed from its original design, was like one great flash of inspiration, and as such is surely the most amazing achievement in the architecture of golf. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley in other ways has shown himself to be a man of immense imagination; but was it ever better illustrated than in his making of Prince's? Our admiration for the course may be not the less but greater because we cannot play her properly. For my own humble part I love most the championship course of the Royal Cinque Ports club at Deal near by. Here there are charm and variety, and holes of the most splendid character. If some find fault with them, what does it matter when they are so good to play? The Royal St. George's course at Sandwich, again, is a most beautiful thing; surely there is no other which gives such an infinite pleasure to a greater number of capable players. But for sheer golfing quality, Prince's truly is the queen of all.
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I have asked Mr. Mallaby-Deeley to tell me what his ideals are in this matter, and in response he has made a statement of such interest and value that it should be given at its length. He said that, premising that for purposes of consideration we should regard "ideal links" as having reference only to the sequence of holes, both as to ranges of length, difficulty, and beauty of design, he submitted that the making of such an ideal course, given suitable ground, depended then on three things only, being knowledge, time, and money. St. Andrews and his own Prince's come nearest to this ideal, but the former fails in that it is too straight in and out, and also because one can pull all the way out and all the way home again without falling into any trouble, the truth being that the more one pulls the greater the possibility of safety in doing so. Some say that if you do thus pull you cannot reach the greens, but in these days that is not so. We have seen them reach those greens after the most exaggerated pulling. Then he thinks that the set of St. Andrews in the matter of prevailing winds is far from ideal, for so often the wind is at one's back all the way out and against the player all the way coming home, or the other way about. Again, no one can deny, he says, that St. Andrews has three if not four very ordinary and commonplace holes. Prince's, as now laid out, has in general opinion not a single commonplace or uninteresting hole in the whole course, but it has had the advantage of being laid out many years after St. Andrews, and after the introduction of the rubber ball. A course comes nearer to the ideal as its holes are placed to every variety of wind. In the early days of Prince's at Sandwich the disadvantage of an in and out course were soon discovered and an enormous amount of money was spent in altering it to its present form, in which, with the single exception of St. George's, it is the best in existence, the old course at Sandwich being ideal in this respect. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley, looking upon his Prince's in the supercritical way of a pleased but still insistent creator, can see only one blemish in it, and that is that the two short holes, being the third and the fifth—though the fifth is longer than the third—come too close together. Any two holes on a course may separately be extremely good, but coming together lack something of perfection because of the repetition that instantly arises. He would have the pin visible for every approach shot on his ideal links, and the only exception he would make would be in the case of a full second shot with a long carry over a high bunker to the end of it, for this to his mind is a most interesting shot. Such an one, he points out, is that presented at the sixteenth hole at Littlestone, and he would be surprised to know that any one would ever think of altering that hole in order to enable a player in the distance to see the pin. He also would not agree to placing a bunker immediately at the back of the green, which punishes the man who dares to be up and encourages "pawkiness."
The visible pin is imperative at short holes; he will admit no exceptions. But all who have been to Prince's have been most impressed with the beauty and golfing perfection of the dog-legged holes there, a couple of which are presented at the beginning of the round, immediately introducing the stranger to some of the best delights of this course. He would have dog-leg holes of both shapes in his round, those bending to the right to worry the slicer, and those angled towards the left to help the long driver who greatly dares. The first hole at Hoylake and the second and eleventh at Prince's are dog-leg holes that he likes best. But, he will tell you, by far the most vital matters to consider in making any course with pretensions to being ideal are the position of the greens and the bunkering through the course and near the hole, and, though it is a consideration that is too often overlooked, it is nearly as important to bear in mind from which quarter the prevailing wind blows. He believes every shot from the tee to the hole ought to be of equal importance, but in the case of the majority of the courses this is not so. Despite the fact that on the tee the man has everything in his favour, a perfect stance and a teed-up ball, he is given more space to play into and a greater margin for inaccuracy than in the case of any other shot. This, says the architect, is wrong. Surely it should be as necessary on the ideal course to place the tee shot as any other. He has turned the subject of ribbon bunkers very thoroughly over in his mind. In a general way, he does not like them because of the varying winds. He says, "Tutiores ibis in medias vias," is a safe and golden rule of life, and it applies equally to ribbon bunkers which while they make some holes mar many more. Most frequently on account of wind and other things this form of hazard fails as a fair guard to the green for a hole that is meant for two full shots. It is then wrongly placed, and would generally be improved by the substitution of ear bunkers to catch sliced and pulled shots thereto. The push shot is one of the most difficult in the game to play, but it is one of the prettiest and most satisfactory in accomplishment; but the ribbon bunker is often unfair to the man who plays it. Yet the absence of such ribbon bunkers does not prevent the man who likes to play his high mashie shots from still playing them. Thus the absence of this form of bunker is fair to all, while if placed very near the green its presence penalises the push-shot player. But many a tee shot would be tame if it were not for the ribbon bunkers some way ahead. In epitome he says to the student of architecture—"Bunker your course so that every bad shot is punished; place your bunkers so that every shot must be played and played well; make the length of your holes such that if a shot is foozled it costs you a stroke; guard your greens right and left, and even to the very edge and into the green itself, if necessary, but this must of course depend on the length of shot to be played; and at one-shot holes make the green a very fort of surrounding bunkers, and guard the tee shot. Do not leave it open as at the famous short hole at St. Andrews, a much overrated hole. But above all things, make your bunkers fair; don't make them impossible to get out of except by playing back."
As to the lengths of the holes on his ideal course he would have about twelve two-shot holes varying from 380 to 440 yards, and there should be three one-shot holes of about 165, 180, and 200 yards respectively. There would be two or three drive-and-iron holes of about 350 yards each, but a drive-and-iron hole should be so constructed that if the drive is missed it will be impossible for the man who missed it to sail on the green with his next. There is a good example of this in the fifteenth at Prince's, for although this hole is only a drive and an iron the penalty for missing the drive is that it takes the player two more shots to reach the green because of the nature of the ground in front of the tee. And then he would have it a condition that the last three holes should average about 400 to 420 yards each, and the seventeenth and eighteenth should be made specially testing ones. This is the ideal course, and, being such, it is not a place for foozlers. But if it is properly and fairly constructed it will be easier and pleasanter to play on than a course which is made difficult by the simple method of making it unfair, for example by putting bunkers in the wrong places, by cutting the hole in a ridiculous position on the green, by punishing the man who is "up" (a new-fangled and absurd idea of course construction) by placing the hole immediately in front of a bunker at the back of the green, and by leaving the approach to the green from a long shot rough or broken, and so unfair. It is easy to make any course difficult, and so conducive to high scoring, by making it unfair. This induces pawky play because the punishment for bold play may be too severe. He is also of opinion (and there is a constantly growing tendency to agree with him) that there is too much premium on putting, and that it plays far too important a part in the game, especially among first-class players and in first-class matches. He thinks the hole should be six and a half inches instead of four and a quarter. Under present conditions a putt missed by half an inch bears the same punishment (although the rest of the hole through the green may have been played faultlessly) as a hopelessly bad shot by one's opponent through the green.
Prince's supports its creator's arguments very well indeed, and one enormous fascination of it lies in the fact that it is always suggesting to you, always inviting you, always tempting you to do the more daring thing, and hinting that, even though you failed, the suffering might not be too much. In that, it seems to me, lies the chief charm of this masterpiece of architecture.
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So when we come home from other lands, let us think of golfing holidays in our own, and moralise from old experience. It is an aggravating circumstance that while there is hardly anything in the way of change and holiday that is so splendid as a golfing holiday, there is hardly any kind that is so easily spoiled. The golfer is not dependent on the weather, only to a small extent on his friends, he seldom knows limits of time or space, yet he fails oftener in his pursuit of the perfect happiness of a summer vacation than do the unsophisticated people who kill the time of August and September in other ways, and that happens because of the very fascination of the thing, and the enthusiasm and excess to which it leads him on. In our working days limits are imposed upon us; when we are loose and unrestricted all system and wise restraint fly to pieces. It is not only that we often play too much on holidays, but that during play and in the intervals between those spells of action the imagination is at work too fast and makes riot upon settled methods which have raised the game of the individual to some more or less agreeable sort of quality. Excess and experiment are the two evils that shatter so many golfing holidays, and yet the contradictions of golf are such that we find there is something good to be said both for excess and for experiment. But be all this as it may, it is not until a man has gone through twenty golfing holiday campaigns that he fully realises he has an education to serve in this matter, and after twenty more he is able to start out on the forty-first in the strong confidence that from the days and weeks before him he will extract the full available supply of rich golfing delight. These remarks do not well apply to the person of the thick phlegmatic temperament who plays now with the same set of clubs that he started with ten years or more agone, the which have not had their shafts varnished, nor their grips attended since the time of their first swinging. This man is without imagination, without feeling, and, with no blessing upon him, we may let him wander away to play wherever he will, knowing that he will always derive some great satisfaction from his pursuit and gain mightily in health. He is not like most of us; he is as the man without any religion; he is very material. He eats, he plays, he rests, he sleeps. And he does very well in it all; and yet we of the majority who think always, ponder deeply, worry exceedingly and are wracked with doubts and conflicting theories, disappointed ever in fruitless experiments, do not envy him. The material person does not go down into the depths where we grieve and are in pain (how often do we go and grieve!), but neither does he ascend to the heights of pleasure that are scaled by successful experiment, by the sudden discovery of some wonderful secret that seems to have unlocked the gates of the higher golf and rendered us immune from failure for evermore. (Never mind what happens in the morning!) We may suffer the depths for those hot moments of life on the summits.
This preamble is needed for warning. Golf is the great game of emotions, and at holiday times those emotions are quickened, strung up and, flying loose in riot, play the devil with our game. I am sorry to believe that many young men who come back to their homelands from the golfing holiday grounds in October do so with inward sighs and stifled sobs. They tell us that they have had the most glorious time; they may foolishly give an account of a round said to have been done in 74, and of many of the longest holes that cost them only four strokes apiece, and we forgive them for their words which we know are false, realising the pain of their case and that their dissembling is in a small manner for the good of the game. Their emotions have led them astray; they have been weak and foolish; they have done the wrong things and they have left undone all those which were recommended to them as right. They have played three rounds a day, and they have bought new drivers and putters. And some of them have actually changed their stances and had an inch cut off a favourite shaft! Truly their emotions have led them wrong. Player! if you would pass the placid holiday, kill those emotions and cast them off. You may then take a golfing holiday from which you will derive that magnificent material comfort and refreshment that your butcher and baker do when they walk upon the promenade at Margate and, well fed, sleep at times on the sunlit sands. You will really believe on your return to labour in the town, that you have had a splendid time, but soon you will cease to talk of it for you will find that there is very little to remember. Time was passed; that was all. The man whose emotions played old Harry with him does not forget. He has something indeed to remember, for he lived very much in his month of play. So you will see that in the scheme of golfing things as jointly ordained by Nature and kind Providence, with the petty meddling of the man himself, there are different processes of holiday, and each in its way is the best. As in so many other affairs of golf there are contradictions abounding. But let us, after such philosophy, move to some definite considerations, and consider life and facts as they are presented to us.