Well then, it is our business, in order to make solitary practice interesting and valuable, to create a game for ourselves. It is easily done, and there are some wise men who say that they would rather play their solitary game, going round the links alone with all their clubs or nearly, than they would play a match with a stranger who happened not to turn out to be the right kind of golfing man. Many who start systems of solitary competitive play against themselves in this way fail with them, did they but know it, because they are not honest with themselves. Having become very badly bunkered, and having taken three for recovery, they must not call it one because they should have got out in one, had they played the shot just right; nor, having missed a foot putt, must they consider it as holed because if they had tried their uttermost they could have holed it. We must see that it is of the essence of solus play, and making it valuable, that the man should try his best and should know and feel that he has no second attempt at the same stroke, just as he has none in the real game when others are there. If he permits himself second drives and putts, all the strokes are done without the sense of responsibility, and the player then were better indoors writing letters to his friends to come and match themselves against him. Therefore let the first and the most inexorable rule in one's solitary golf be that the shot once made must count, no matter what its quality. What may be permitted—and this does not operate as an exception to the rule—is that when a shot has been badly done another ball may be played from the same place. One may learn something in this way, but always must it be understood that the first ball must count; and it is a good maxim that there should be no attempted repetition of a successful stroke, for if it were done well again the man would be no better off in mind or skill, and if it failed there would be an unnecessary disappointment and uncertainty.
Now, to consider ways of competing against oneself that will make interesting the lonely game, and lift it to value too, every man of thought might quite well devise some suitable system for himself; but we may tell him of some that have been successful with many players, and of a good principle to embrace in any new one, which is never to make the test or competition too severe. I believe that golfers are improved more by coaxing and flattery than by harsh measures and heavy defeats. It is often said that the best way to improve is to play against better players than ourselves, but there are limitations to that advice which are not always sufficiently emphasised. The superior party ought not to be too much superior, the different points of the game of the two men should not be very widely contrasted, and the better player should be giving to the inferior one so much allowance that the latter ought to win as often as he loses, never letting it be forgotten that, when handicaps are right and three-fourths of the difference is allowed, the odds are really always in favour of the better player, as has been proved over and over again. Even when a man is of long experience and has been fashioned by nature in the heroic mould, it is impossible to play his very best golf, and be improving on it, unless he "has his pecker up." The pecker properly set makes happiness and confidence, and it is only when such moods are engendered that the man is led on to higher things, perceives the absence of limitation to his prospects of improvement, and likens himself to the chrysalis of a Vardon or a Braid. Above everything else, as we have agreed so often before, golf is a game of hope. Crush the hope by setting the man a task that is beyond him and you take away the joy of the game and kill the happy prospects. The golfer who is winning will win again and play better.
In these observations there have been some principles for practice laid down that are seldom emphasised, but are of the most vital importance. To make exact systems to suit them is, after all, a simple affair. Now many men play round after round, counting their strokes, as if they were playing in a medal competition, and comparing results at the finish, always trying to break their own records. They may gain some benefit from this play, but it often fails in interest, and consequently in value, for the same reason that medal competitions do—because of the continual occurrence of the one, or it may be two, very bad holes. The percentage of cards that are turned from good to bad merely by one disastrous hole must be very high, and when a man is playing a practice round and does a nine at the second hole, it is difficult for him to treat the remainder very seriously or be keen about them. The remedy is simple. Let this system of playing and comparisons be that his aggregate shall always be for sixteen or seventeen holes only, leaving the worst to be eliminated. There is nothing unfair in doing so. The one bad hole is frequently more the result of accident than of inability. At the beginning of a system of practice play three holes may be dropped regularly from the reckoning, then a week later two, the week after that one only. Comparisons of form are more accurate and reliable when the worst hole is eliminated, than when all eighteen are totted up. Then the man may play the bogey game; but instead of opposing the set bogey of the course and complicating the business with handicap strokes, let him make a bogey of his own of such a kind that it represents not the scratch man's proper game but his, so that when he is playing well he ought to beat it, and it should be a tolerable match. In constructing such a bogey, he might make allowance for his own special likes and dislikes in regard to particular holes. Again, I have known men to derive pleasure and improvement from a system of practice against the ordinary bogey by which they merely reckoned the number of holes at which they equalled or beat the phantom's figures, disregarding the losses. There is a little difference between this and the ordinary reckoning, and it is in the direction of encouragement if the player is coming on.
And then there is the interesting system that was first set forth by a most eminent player who has been amateur champion more than once, by which the practiser wins half-crowns for his good play and loses them on his off days. He plays against bogey on terms that give him an equal chance. Then he establishes a money-box with two sections in it, one being for bogey and the other for himself, and into each section he deposits four half-crowns, which is very little to pay for all the enjoyment he is about to gain. When bogey beats him one of the half-crowns is lifted out of the man's section into the ghost's, but when flesh and blood prevail the coin comes back. The course of practice is ended when one side or the other has got all the half-crowns. If bogey has them there is something wrong with the game of the man, and he had better start another series; but when the man is triumphant he may depart for a holiday exultingly and spend the money on it, in the doing of which he will probably win some more, his form being so much bettered by his lonely practice.
CHAPTER XVI
THE OLD DIGNITY OF LONDON GOLF, AND ITS NEW IMPORTANCE, WITH A WORD FOR THE CHARM OF INLAND COURSES.
Perhaps in the middle ages of the game some rare old conservative of a player at one of the great Scottish seats of golf was told by another that a gentleman had just arrived by the coach from London and would like a match in the morning, and it is distinctly possible, if he was the excellent man we picture him, that he ejaculated, "And where, sir, is London?" The manner would have been Johnsonian, if not the sentiment. Should any one now be disposed to regard such lack of knowledge—though I think you would find it was only what might be called judicial golfing ignorance—or narrowness, or whatever it was, as merely stupid or a little culpable, he may hesitate. The pride of dignity, arising from conscious strength and superiority, was a fine thing among the Scottish golfers, and certainly was to be admired. That spirit, that sturdy consciousness of personal value, have helped to the making of a British empire. And sometimes a golfer would wander in the north and be discovered by the players there to have a wooden club with a brass sole, and thereupon he might be good-humouredly mocked for being the Blackheath golfer that he was, since it was on the famous course by London that the brassey was first used. Since then London has given other good things to golf, including many courses that are unequalled among their kind and a number of players of high championship rank. And sometimes there is more golf played in a day within twenty-five miles of Charing Cross than there is in the whole of Scotland in a week, and much of it is very good golf. But this is not a place for comparisons, and particularly it is not meant for one in which the English gratitude to Scottish benefactors for the gift of this remarkable game is to be lessened from the full. It is only suggested that London golf is now a thing of great account. That is coming to be understood; but one doubts if the Londoners properly realise that the game in the metropolis has rich history and traditions which make a match for those of nearly any other place. Except that the great players of the game of different ages were so little acquainted with it, Blackheath has golfing land as historic as any, and the Royal Blackheath Club, with its origin in 1608, is the oldest in the world. That is London. Some time since there was a fashion for open-air shows of pageantry, and if the golfers had then been so disposed they could have put forward a pageant of London golf that would have embraced most picturesque and impressive tableaux. There is King James the First of England and the Sixth of Scotland, keen golfer indeed, playing the game at Blackheath in the company of some of his nobles when the court was at Greenwich, and there is a charming scene to be imagined in which the monarch gives his royal sanction and authority to the Society of Golfers that is established at this place in 1608, as it is well believed to have been, and in varying forms to have maintained its existence ever since, being to-day the Royal Blackheath Golf Club, and highly respected. I think we should regard this King James as being the very first of our London golfers, and he makes a fine figure of a player for the distinction, keen enough in all conscience. Five years before the reputed beginning of the Society at Blackheath he appointed William Mayne to be the royal clubmaker, and a few years later gave one named Melvill a monopoly of ball-making at four shillings a time. Altogether this makes a good scene of golf.
Here in the earliest days the course of Blackheath consisted of but five holes, which was then considered the proper number, and was the same as the Honourable Company had at Leith. Later there were seven holes arranged, and though they are played in a different order, those seven remain much the same to-day. It is to the discredit of London golfers as a body, those golfers who make the most reverential pilgrimages to northern shrines, that they have not, to the extent of one in a hundred, ever been to the scene of the old Blackheath golf, or played a game there on this hallowed ground, as they may at their will. It is the story again of the prophet in his own country, the same failing as that by which the majority of Londoners might be condemned for never having visited the Tower of London. I believe I have met more golfers in America who have been to Blackheath than I have met in England, for I have encountered several who told me they had not cared to sail back home until they had made the short journey down from Charing Cross to the famous common.