There are feats of other kinds, as those which count as freaks, poor things enough but wondered at by some. What shall we say of the Pittsburg golfer who wagered four thousand dollars that he could play a ball over four and a half miles of the city streets in one hundred and fifty strokes? Beginning at five o’clock in the morning, he did this thing in one hundred and nineteen strokes, but lost a thousand dollars in damage done to property on the way. That man found an emulator in London who undertook to play a ball from Ludgate Circus to a fountain basin in Trafalgar Square. There are men who like to drive fine balls from the glass faces of other people’s expensive watches, and others who prefer the tamer sport of driving from the eggs of hens. There was the man of Sandwich, who, with a champagne bottle as his only “club,” played, and—Oh, shame upon it!—beat a neophyte who carried a full bag of the most improved clubs. There was the old-time golfer who lofted balls over the spire of St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, and another who tooled his gutty from Bruntsfield Links to the top of Arthur’s Seat. Better and more purposeful was the practice which Mr. Laidlay used to undertake before championships, when, with Jack White for caddie, he would play a ball from the first tee at North Berwick to the Roundell Hole at Gullane, six miles away, by way of the Eel Burn Hole, the sands along the shore, the neighbourhood of the fishermen’s cottages, and away over Muirfield and the rough country to the top of the hill, playing from whatever lie his ball chanced to find, and once doing this course in a total of ninety-seven strokes.
V
Do we not sometimes hear one sort of sportsmen make it a complaint against golf, that the player does not run any personal risk of injury to his life or his limbs? Some of these men will tell you that you only arrive at real sport when such dangers are incurred. It may be so, but we shall not on that account seek to increase the risks of golf. It is one of the glories of the game that it is such fine sport and commands the wild enthusiasm of the best sportsmen, though it threatens the life neither of the player nor any of the living creatures made by God that give the fulness to Nature, and add, though it may be unconsciously, to the golfer’s joy as he strides over the links on a fine morning. In other sports, when man goes wandering over the hills, he takes his gun with him that he may kill something. Leave him alone with Nature, and as the lord of creation he is impelled to go forward to the attack on the lesser beings. In golf alone does he roam over the country and by the side of the sea with never a thought of what he may kill passing through his mind. He has a great joy in his own life, and he is all benevolence and wishful for the happy life of others.
Things have been killed—accidentally—at golf. Many luckless birds have got in the way of tee shots, and even a fish lost its life on a golf course, and is now in a glass case in the clubhouse at Totteridge. By some devious means it got on to the course one day when there had been heavy rains and much overflowing all about. And—let it be whispered to the shooters and the mighty hunters!—men have been maimed, and even killed on golf links, though we pray that, despite the extra sport, there may be no more of them, and that the single pain of the game may be the skin-blisters and corns that sometimes will come up at the bottom of the left forefinger and elsewhere. I did not think better of golf as a sport when one day, in playing my way outwards on the North Berwick links, a ball from a hidden tee came upon me unawares and carried the pipe that I was smoking away with it for some twenty or thirty yards, while I stood to wonder what was happening. And even by his own deeds may a man [court] perils, for we heard the other day that one was playing at Ravenscar when he took a full mashie shot with the object of clearing a stone wall; but the ball struck the wall and rebounded with great force against his head. And from his head it rebounded again over the wall, so it was said; and it was not astonishing to hear that the player was slightly stunned! If adventure in the form of fierce conflict with wild beasts and reptiles is what the full-blooded sportsman wishes, he may have it. A member of the Royal Sydney Club played his ball down a hole, and he put his hand down it to see if he could recover the ball. He seized hold of something soft and drew out a venomous brown snake—which he hurriedly pushed back. I am told by my golfing directory that at Umtala, in Rhodesia, “the course consists of nine holes. In addition to other hazards, lions are occasionally in evidence.” I happen to have had some private confirmation of this report, and it is told me that if ever a golfer in Umtala indulged himself in such a freak as golf by candlelight, as players have been known to do elsewhere, he might not complete the game that he had projected, for the king of beasts is accustomed to prowl over the land at night, and picks up any little living thing that he may find about. In other respects there is something quaint about this golf at Umtala, for I am informed that in the daytime the course is frequented by crows with white bands round their necks, which go by the name of “Free Kirk Ministers.” They are thieves, and now and again they swoop down and fly away again with the ball.
They are fine pioneers of the game in South Africa, and it deserves to prosper there. They have needed strong hearts and much patience and forbearance. I have been to golf with a man who has lately come back from a short visit there, and he says that their “greens” look as if they were covered with millions of garnets; and poor as the putting may be from some points of view, it can be performed with marvellous accuracy, and the people of the Colonies deny that anybody loves the game more than they do, or is more enthusiastic in it than they are. Their trials are uncommon and severe, but they become accustomed to them. At Wynberg, or some place like that, there is a lake to carry at a short hole, and one knows what sometimes happens when there is a water hazard between the tee and the green, one shot away. Here the avoidance of it is not made any the easier, because a long line of Kaffir boys is formed up on the near side of the lake, stripped, with eyes aflame with eagerness, and wildly gesticulating with their arms and hands, and jostling and scolding at each other while they seem to be appealing “Me! me! me!” to the golfer on the tee. Away the ball goes from the tee, and at the slightest indication that it was struck with dangerous inaccuracy, splash go all the Kaffir boys into the water. It is very much like the game of throwing sixpences overboard when your ship of voyage is at anchor off some Eastern port.
VI
Rummaging through a second-hand book shop in Oxford Street one day, I came upon an old volume of sporting anecdotes published far back in 1867, and long since out of print and forgotten. Turning over the pages in the evening, and encountering therein many stories of doughty deeds by river and on field and moor, I came at last upon what must evidently be the original version of the story which has been more briefly told by others of the golf match at night for £500 a hole, and I cannot do better than quote it direct from the book. One of the contributors was quoting from a letter he had received from a well-known sporting friend of his, in which this gentleman gave him a short description of golf, about which nobody else belonging to the book appeared to know anything. In his prefatory remarks concerning the game the correspondent said: “The game of golf is quite a Scotch game; it is played at Blackheath, Wimbledon Common, and a few other places in England; but the players are always Scotchmen. It is a game requiring a good eye and great skill; and people who get over the first difficulties of the game are generally quite as fond of it as the English are of cricket.” With no disparagement of the attractions of cricket, one would be inclined to say that in these days the English who get over the first difficulties of the game of golf, and even those unfortunates who do not get over those difficulties, are much fonder of it than the said English are of cricket.
Then, concerning that great match, the correspondent writes: “Lord Kennedy and the late Mr. Cruickshank, of Langley Park, were good players, and had frequent matches for large sums of money; but the most remarkable match ever played by them came off during the Montrose race week many years since. At the race ordinary they got up a match of three holes, for £500 each hole, and agreed to play it then and there. It was about ten or half-past ten p.m. and quite dark. No light was allowed except one lantern placed on the hole, and another carried by the attendant of the player, in order that they might ascertain to whom the ball struck belonged. We all moved down to the golf course to see this curious match. Boys were placed along the course, who were accustomed to the game, to listen to the flight of the balls, and to run to the spot where a ball struck and rested on the ground. I do not remember which of the players won the odd hole; it was won, I know, by only one hole. But the most remarkable part of the match was, that they made out their holes with much about the same number of strokes that they usually did when playing in daylight. I think, on an average, that they took about five or six strokes in daylight, and in the dark six or seven. They were, however, in the constant habit of playing over the Montrose course.” Surely this must be accounted one of the most extraordinary games of golf we have heard of.
VII
In days gone by the position of the lady in the great world of golf was something of a doubtful quantity, but there can be no question that she is now an established institution, and that she will stay. There have been men who have said that golf is not a lady’s game, and many who still stoutly maintain that it is at all events only a game for very young ladies who have not taken upon themselves any serious domestic cares. But it makes little difference what they say. For the first time in history a married lady won the Ladies’ Championship in 1906. The ladies have a golf union of their own, which is the kind of thing that a large section of rebellious men have been sighing for for many years, but are apparently still far from getting. Moreover, they have an inter-county championship, which again is what men say they ought to have, but cannot get.