Another fine thing about Tom, and one that has always endeared him to the golfing world, is the fact that there has never been anything in the least niggardly in the gratitude which he extends towards the game with which his life has been bound up. Suggest to Tom that there is anything better in life than golf, and you have done the first thing towards raising up a barrier of reserve between him and you. Listen to how he spoke of the game of his heart on a New Year’s Day twenty-one years back from now, when even then he was by way of becoming an old man. “An’ it hadna been for gowff,” he said to the patron who greeted him in the customary form for the first day of the year, “I’m no sure that at this day, sir, I wad hae been a leevin’ man. I’ve had ma troubles an’ ma trials, like the lave; an’ whiles I thocht they wad hae clean wauved me, sae that to ‘lay me doun an’ dee’—as the song says—lookit about a’ that was left in life for puir Tam. It was like as if ma vera sowle was a’thegither gane oot o’ me. But there’s naething like a ticht gude gowing mautch to soop yer brain clear o’ that kin’ o’ thing; and wi’ the help o’ ma God an’ o’ gowff, I’ve aye gotten warsled through somehow or ither. The tae thing ta’en wi’ the tither, I haena had an ill time o’t. I dinna mind that iver I had an unpleasant word frae ony o’ the many gentlemen I’ve played wi’. I’ve aye tried—as ma business was, sir—to mak’ masel’ pleesant to them; an’ they’ve aye been awfu’ pleesant to me. An’ noo, sir, to end a long and maybe a silly crack—bein’ maistly about masel’—ye’ll just come wi’ me, an’ ye’ll hae a glass o’ gude brandy, and I’ll have ma pint o’ black strap, an’ we’ll drink a gude New Year to ane anither, an’ the like to a’ gude gowffers.”
Sportsman, in the best sense, Tom has always been, and he was a worthy predecessor of the men who are to-day at the head of the ranks of the professional golfers. That is a pretty story that is told of Captain Broughton’s challenge to Tom to hole a putt for £50. As everybody knows, Tom was once famous as the man who missed the very shortest putts, to whom there was duly delivered, when he was at Prestwick, a letter which was addressed only to the “Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick.” On the occasion under notice Tom was playing to the High Hole on the old course at St. Andrews, and had got into sore trouble, so that he was playing two or three more when Captain Broughton happened to pass by and became a witness of what was happening. Tom, be it noted, always belonged to golfers of that fine and sportmanlike persistency, who would never give up a hole while there was a single spark of hope remaining alight. “Oh, pick up your ball, Tom, it’s no use!” said the Captain half chidingly. “Na, na,” answered Tom, “I might hole it!” “If you do I’ll give you £50,” retorted the Captain, and it seemed a very safe retort too. “Done!” responded Tom, and thereupon made one more stroke with his iron club, and lo! the ball hopped on to the green, and glided on and on towards the hole, hesitated as it came nearer to it, curled round towards it, crept nearer and nearer until it was on the lip—and down! He had holed! Then said the triumphant Tom, “That will make a nice little nest-egg for me to put in the bank,” and the Captain looked very serious and went his way. A few days later the Captain came along with the £50, and with a smile and a compliment offered it to Tom as the fruits of his achievement; but Tom declined absolutely to take a penny of it. “I thank ye, Captain, and I’m grateful to ye all the same; but I canna tak’ the money, because, ye see, ye wisna really meaning it, and it wisna a real wager.” And to that he stuck.
VI
There are alarms and excursions in the ball business daily, and the player takes a devoted interest in them all. The trade is striving with might and main to put ten yards on to the drive of little Tomkins, and poor old grandfather, who began his golf at sixty, may think as he goes off to sleep at night that perhaps by the morning there will be a new ball on the market which will enable him to get his handicap down to 20. The good inventors are doing all that they can for him. They are trying everything and each thing in all possible different ways. The other day a great professional was taking stock of his shop, and he found that he had twenty-seven different varieties of rubber-cored balls in hand. And many golfers feel that they must try them all and each new one as it comes out. The evolution of the golf ball is one of the most wonderful things of its kind. All of us who have played golf for more than five years can plume ourselves on the fact that we lived in golf in the earlier era of the gutta; it is strange to think that possibly half of the present golfing population cannot say that, so quickly has the game been coming on of late. But not one golfer in five thousand of those living now played in the days of the feather-stuffed ball, which was the pioneer. It had the game to itself up to 1848, which was the year that the gutta came in. St. Andrews was the great centre of manufacture of the “featheries,” and in the shop of Allan Robertson alone there were some three thousand a year made. Of course three thousand rubber-cores would be nothing in these days, but making a ball was a big job then, and they were expensive, costing about four shillings each. And a single topped shot with an iron finished them absolutely! The ballmakers bought the little leather cases ready made from the St. Andrews saddlers, a small hole being left to stuff the feathers in. The feathers were boiled, and it took a large hatful to stuff a ball tight with them. Mr. Campbell of Saddell is believed to have taken the first gutta balls to St. Andrews, and when he did so there was consternation everywhere. They thought the trade in the featheries would be ruined, and that anyone could make the new balls. So an attempt was made to boycott them, and it is even said that Allan Robertson bought up all the lost balls that were found in the whins and destroyed them by fire! Tom Morris was working in his shop then, and they quarrelled so violently the first day when Tom used a gutta that they parted for ever. Tom himself tells the story in this way: “I can remember the circumstances well. Allan could not reconcile himself at first to the new ball at all, just in the same way as Mr. John Low and many other golfers could not take to the Haskell when it first appeared. But the gutta became the fashion very quickly, as the rubber-cored ball has done, so what could we do? One day, and it is one that will always be clearly stamped on my memory, I had been out playing golf with a Mr. Campbell of Saddell, and I had the misfortune to lose all my supply of balls, which were, you can well understand, very much easier lost in those days, as the fairway of the course was ever so much narrower then than it is now, and had thick, bushy whins close in at the side. But never mind that. I had, as I said, run short of balls, and Mr. Campbell kindly gave me a gutta one to try. I took to it at once, and as we were playing in, it so happened that we met Allan Robertson coming out, and someone told him that I was playing a very good game with one of the new gutta balls, and I could see fine, from the expression of his face, that he did not like it at all, and when we met afterwards in his shop, we had some high words about the matter, and there and then we parted company, I leaving his employment. There are two big bushes out there in Allan’s old garden. Well, one of them was planted by him and the other by me, just about that same time, so they cannot be young bushes now.” But by 1850 the guttas were in general use and nobody was much the worse.
It is odd to reflect that golfers were very near the rubber core several times during the fifty-four years that the gutta held office. As we were told in the big law case, an old lady made balls that were wound with rubber thread to make them bounce more; but, nearer to our rubber-core, there were two golfers who at different times and places are said to have made what was to all intents and purposes just the same ball in principle that we use to-day, but not so thoroughly made and perfected. One of these golfers used to make them and give them to his friends. But there was no advertising and not so much enterprise in the way of companies with big capital in those days, and these inventors let their chance go by. What a chance! There were millions, and millions again, in their idea.
None the less the Americans deserve the credit for being the men who gave us the rubber-cored ball as we know it. But for their belief in it, and their enterprise, there would have been no rubber-cores to-day, and perhaps far fewer golfers. Let me tell the real story of how they came by their idea and their determination. In the early summer of 1898, Mr. Coburn Haskell was the guest of Mr. Wirk, one of the magnates of the American rubber industry, at his house in Cleveland, Ohio, and both being golfers, they golfed all day and talked golf during dinner and afterwards. It was these dinner conversations that brought about the Haskell ball, revolutionised the game, and made an industry which is the most thriving of all connected with sport. Both gentlemen agreed that they wanted a better ball than the gutta, something that would go farther. At last, after many sittings, one of them observed that something might be done by winding rubber under tension. Winding it without such tension would result in the ball being too soft. This idea was elaborated during the next night or two, and then Mr. Wirk hurried away to his factory, obtained some rubber strands, and he and Mr. Haskell spent nearly a day in winding, by their own hands and in secret, the first ball of the new era. They covered it with gutta-percha and gave it to a professional to try, without informing him of the nature of what he was trying. They watched anxiously for the result, and with the very first shot that the man had with it he carried a bunker that had never been carried before, beating the best drive that had ever been made on that course by many yards. Then the two makers smiled happily at each other. They knew that they were “on a good thing.” It took more than two years to invent a machine to do the winding, and some time longer to perfect the process. Then the Haskell killed the gutta in a season. Before that Britain supplied America with all her balls. Afterwards she sent none; but the makers of the Haskell bought 30,000 dozen that had been sent over, for the sake of the gutta-percha of which they were made, and at the bare price of that material.
In the first five months of 1903 the American people shipped 40,000 dozen of their balls to this country. So were the tables turned. Now they ship very few indeed, as we make our balls ourselves. Instead, they are threatening American golfers as to what will happen if they catch them playing on American courses with British balls. Of the little ball that was thought out over the dinner table in Ohio on those hot summer evenings there are now half a million used in a week in the busy season on British courses, and some fifteen millions, at a cost of about a million pounds, in the course of the season!
But yet not one man in a thousand who looks upon his beautiful white rubber core when it is new knows what and how much is inside it. In one ball there are 192 yards of thread, the whole of which is stretched to eight times its original length, so that, as it is in the ball, there are 1536 yards of it—nearly a mile. This thread has to be wound round something. It has commonly been wound round a tiny piece of wood; now, in the case of some balls, it is being wound round little bags of gelatine and things like that. Some people are under the delusion that in the case of such balls the whole centre is gelatine, and that there is no rubber.
VII
The man who has the courage to enter upon a medal round or a match with a keen opponent and play with a cheap, or cheaper, ball, is a rarity, and an admirable one. Faith goes for a long way in these matters. Give a man the most expensive ball on the market to play with, and he feels that he has got something which will do justice to his capabilities, and occasionally let him off with light penalties for some of his errors. Let him have a cheap ball and he is uneasy, with the idea that nothing is likely to go right for him. When he has faith in his ball—his expensive ball—he plays accordingly, that is to say, he plays with confidence, and the probabilities are, of course, that in such case he will play better than he would otherwise do, especially if he makes a good start. If he has not so much faith in his ball—because it is cheap—he will not play so well, because he will play without confidence. This is really a truism which is emphasised over and over again on the links every day. As this player cannot test his balls accurately and show for a certainty which one is better than others, he has naturally faith in the more expensive, because it ought to be better, whether it is or not. So one comes quite logically to the conclusion that the most expensive balls are the best. Now suppose that the makers of any of our leading brands of florin balls were at this stage to reduce the price of their specialities to a shilling each. What would be the attitude of these golfers to that ball? They would say to themselves, or suspect, that these makers were taking something out of the quality of their wares, and if they suspected that, they would almost certainly find innumerable happenings in their next match, which in their opinion would give the utmost possible support to their theory. Every drive that fell short of the proper standard would be put down to the makers of the ball; this really very funny golfer would shake his head and say that it was a great pity, and so forth, but that he would have to give up this shilling ball, of which at two shillings he was so very fond. And he would do it. But all the time there may not be a particle of difference between the old two-shilling ball and the new shilling one.