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One of the doctors' papers was well laughed at a little while since for suggesting that, on account of the nerve strain that it makes, golf is not an ideal game for everybody, especially busy folks with few hours and days for recreation. To quote: "If he takes his failures to play a good game to heart, it is doubtful whether his health gains very much. He has had, it is true, the advantage of a change of scene and occupation, and has lived for a while in a healthier atmosphere, and, if he had only been satisfied with his game, all these things would have conspired to send him back to his work cheered and braced up. But he may play very badly and become unduly worried thereat. A game that is calculated to increase an irritability which has arisen out of a trying week's work can hardly be said to be recreative, at all events to the mind." The medical writer concluded impressively: "The game of golf, if it does not go smoothly, presents so many points of analogy with the tiresome eventualities of life that there can be little doubt that persons of an irritable, gloomy, and worrying disposition would be better if they did not seek their recreation on the links." The common people sometimes look upon these pronouncements from the columns of the professional paper as being like the essence of the wisdom and knowledge of the whole of Harley Street. I remember, however, that when this was published the golfers ridiculed and condemned it, and agreed to take more golf and less medicine. It is not my function to advocate the playing of less golf than is played, much less the stoppage of any of it, but I dare to suggest that there was a germ of truth in what the medical paper said. There are kinds of players who should take their golf with restraint and caution, especially at holiday times. The truth is that a vast proportion of golfing holidays are completely ruined through a bad plan of campaign, or over-doing it, or both—commonly both. We would say nothing to a doubter now about the selection of his friends for his party; he should know that it is a matter demanding the extremest care. A golfing holiday à deux may expose all the least beautiful parts of each man's character, and those who are not such friends that they can comfortably bear each other's infirmities might do better even to go on their golfing way lonely and without a partner. There is much to be said for the freedom of this latter holiday existence, and odd indeed would be the golfing place where there were not many games for the solitary stranger to play.
The night before the opening of the campaign, the eve of the journey outwards, is a trying time to many men. I think of those who take loving interest in their clubs, and have many of them, including a first-class reserve, and perhaps a second-class reserve also, to the original set that is in full commission. The man who has only seven clubs in the world, and seems to take a pride in telling you that he has had them all since the beginning of his golf, is in no difficulty. But with others the trouble is how many clubs to take, and how many to dare to leave behind. After the first selection it is seen that about five or six drivers are put in the list, very many irons, and a large assortment of putters. All the ex-favourites are to be tried over again and experiments to be made with a number of others. It is found then that too many clubs have been selected; but after the most painful and difficult weeding out there may still be some twenty left, and these are taken. It is a mistake. From the day of arrival at the holiday place the man is in doubt as to what he will play with, and he mixes up his game into a bad state of confusion through using different clubs almost every day. It is a good rule, to which every golfer subscribes after twenty campaigns, if not before, to take away the regular clubs as used every day at home, not one less and only two more, being a spare driver and an extra putter. In that way happiness and contentment lie. I would leave out the driver did I not know the case of a man who so much grieved for one he had left behind that he travelled three hundred miles back home to get it!
The little truth that there was in the indictment against the game by the doctors' paper is that it is possible for some men, many of them, to have too much of it, when it becomes bad for the men and bad for their game, and holidays are rendered failures. There was a time when really good golf could only be had at the seaside, or very far away from the great centres of work and business. That is no longer the case, and the situation is that the golf we are having all the time at home is hard and strenuous, demanding great ability and thought. The golfing holiday, then, might very well be made an easy one on a links where the holes are simple, and—remembering another scare that was made by a doctors' paper some time later—I believe that there is as happy golf to be had up on the hills, and in the lonely country places, as on the margin of any sunny sea.
But it is the excess of golf that is played on holidays that spoils everything in the case of the man of a somewhat nervous temperament, and one who may not be as strong and beefy as the John Bull of the pictures. Too many of these people seem to think that, as they have gone away for golf, they should have as much of it as they can get, and play to excess accordingly. Three rounds! Three rounds! One of the reasons why some men play so much—as they put it to themselves—is that they wish to improve their game, and they conceive that the holiday time is the best of all in which to achieve that end. But experience shows that very seldom indeed is a man's game improved at such a time; very frequently it is injured, and that through the excess. When so much of it is played, weariness, though half unconsciously, is induced, proper pains are not taken at every stroke, carelessness becomes constant; then, with deterioration, too many experiments are tried, and worst of all, that terrible, and for the time being incurable, disease of staleness sets in, and there is then an end to all happiness and enjoyment. There is hardly any cure for staleness except complete abstention for a time. It needs some strength of mind to carry out such a resolve, but he who severely limits his golf at holiday times enjoys it the more, and he and his health and his game are the better for it. A holiday system based on wise restrictions is a splendid thing. Men of long experience have tried many of them, and the best of all is this: Play two rounds on the first day of the week, one on the second, two again on the third, one on the fourth, two on the fifth, one on the sixth, and take a whole holiday from the game on the seventh day. That is not too much nor too little. Another point for remembrance is that on the days that are warm and long the old convention of one round before lunch and another afterwards is not a good one for the best and most enjoyable employment of the day. Much better is it to play in the morning, rest pleasantly—sleep, perhaps—in the afternoon, and play again in the cool of the evening, when golf is the best of all—always provided your course is not laid out in a straight line from east to west and back, for playing full against a setting sun is a very tantalising thing.
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Mention has been made of staleness. In our minds there is awakened an unhappy thought with which something had better be done for good contentment's sake ere we pass along to the pleasant consideration of this holiday golf. Staleness is the canker that kills many of these expeditions that are planned with the happiest promise. It is a dread golfing disease that rages on the links almost like an epidemic during August and September. It spoils the game and happiness of every player whom it attacks, and sometimes it cuts holidays short. It is nearly safe to assume that when on holiday one golfer in every half-dozen is afflicted with it, and some of the others are in danger. It consists in the absolute incapacity of the player to produce a game that is within very many strokes of his real form; in truth the game of a good man may fall to the twenty-handicap level or lower, and each new effort on his part to raise it up again only results in a worsening of the case. There is no certain cure except isolation from the game and long rest. A trouble that has the power, then, to ruin the golfing holiday, and often does, must be considered very seriously.
Here is the progress of a case for the details of which I can personally vouch. I was a sympathetic witness of it. The man was playing well at the beginning of the holiday season and went for a month to a fine east coast links where there was no town, no village, and no society but that of golfers, and nothing to do but golf, which was what he desired. For a week he played well, doing two rounds every day, and sometimes three. The weather was hot. At the beginning of the second week there were signs of a failing game. His first anxiety soon increased; he changed his ball, then began to make alterations in his stances and swings, and at the end of the second week was all foozles, and getting worse. Soon afterwards it was obvious that the cause of the whole thing was staleness. The man tried the heroic remedy of loafing about his quarters, golfless, for a couple of days, reading novels and pretending to play bowls against himself. He also studied the stones in the old graveyard near by. On the third day he went back to the links very hopeful, but the case was as bad as before, and, desperate, he gave his game a three days' rest after that. This also failed. Neither of the resting spells was long enough. This being a man of keen nervous temperament, who took his game very seriously and was very miserable, he did the wisest thing by giving up his holiday and going home to work in London.
The primary cause of staleness is excess of play, resulting in exhaustion of nervous and physical energy, which in turn produces carelessness, decreases the capacity for taking the infinite pains that are necessary to the game, and—important—brings about a failure in the subconscious working arrangement between the mind and the physical system that has everything to do with the proper accomplishment of the various strokes. The movements of every golfing swing, as we have agreed, are extremely complicated; they consist of hundreds of little movements amalgamated into one great system, and while one is conscious of the system, it is impossible for the parts of it to be anything but subconsciously done, and they are made perfect by training and practice, and by getting the brain and the physical construction to work together exactly and with harmony. When staleness comes on, this working arrangement breaks down and the player attempts the hopeless task of trying to do consciously what can only be done the other way. I believe that this is the true explanation of staleness.
Note 1.—The exhaustion of the nervous and physical energy is often unsuspected, and is covered up by the enthusiasm for the game. Note 2.—Excess of play does not mean only a frequent playing of three rounds a day. Two rounds every day, as a regular thing, may be excess in many cases. Much depends on the individual. A man of highly-strung temperament will become stale much more quickly than a beefy, phlegmatic person, who is commonly immune. Note 3.—Staleness is very much more easily induced, and develops more quickly and dangerously, in hot weather than at other times, because the tax on the nervous energy and the eyesight is so much greater then.