The Spirit of the Links

by Henry Leach

Some of the oldest but least common golf traditions have reference to women, and it seems to be the fact that one of the first monarchs in England or Scotland who ever sought pleasure and relaxation in trundling a golf ball over the links was Mary Queen of Scots, and that she played on golfing ground no less celebrated than St. Andrews. This was in 1563. During that winter Mary occupied a house in South Street, and it is generally believed that she yielded to the spell of the place and played golf on the links with Chastelard, the favourite, who was subsequently beheaded. Although the evidence that she did thus play at St. Andrews is not conclusive, it is very likely that she did so, for it is quite certain that she played at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it is variously quoted as a specimen of her heartlessness on the one hand and of her enthusiasm for the game on the other, that she was found playing it only a few days after the murder of her husband.

It is suggested that the golfing ancestors of the present lady players were fish girls, and the evidence on the point is comprised in a minute of the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, dated 14th December 1810, which reads thus: “The club to present by subscription a handsome new creel and shawl to the best Female Golfer who plays on the annual occasion on 1st January next, old style (12th January, new), to be intimated to the Fish Ladies by William Robertson, the officer of the club. Two of the best Barcelona silk handkerchiefs to be added to the above premium of the creel.—(Signed) Alex. G. Hunter, Captain.”

But the modern golfing ladies absolutely ignore all this ancient history, and, in a manner, started afresh with a Year 1 on the inception of their championship, like the French people did at the time of their big Revolution. What happened before did not count. Thus, from their point of view, they arrived at a sort of millennium straight away, having no brakes of custom and conservatism on their wheel of progress.

Consequently it is no business of the modern writer to argue as to whether the fair sex ought or ought not to play golf; the fact is there that they do, and that more of them do so every week. And they do it very whole-heartedly. In the box-rooms of the houses of golfing ladies are sundry old tennis racquets with their stringing limp, despised and rejected, and their once favourite croquet mallets have been cut down in the shaft and are now used for odd jobs of carpentering about the house. It is said that the golfing girl does not care a jot what she wears on the links or—mirabile dictu!—what she looks like, so long as she has boots or shoes on with which she can get a firm stance, or upper arrangements which enable her to swing with ease. Thus one hears that she has enormous nails in her footgear, wears the loosest of Irish homespun costumes, and wouldn’t be seen in a picture hat. And she is a fine, robust, healthy creature, who loves the game as much as anyone. The great professionals say that she is a splendid pupil—better even than the men. Harry Vardon holds that the American ladies—whom he has studied on their native links—are better and more thorough than ours; but he thinks that ours are very good when they roll up their sleeves and give up the big hats. “They seem (ladies in general, that is) to take closer and deeper notice of the hints you give them, and to retain the points of the lesson longer in their memories,” says Vardon, and James Braid concurs in the judgment. The only drawback to all this big hitting, hard tramping, and devil-may-care spirit of the girl on the links is that, according to Miss May Hezlet, one of the queens of the links, it enlarges the hands and feet! But think of the freedom!

When the ladies play among themselves—as they generally do—they employ, according to report, a golfing vocabulary of their own, which, though unconventional, let it be said in haste, is quite proper. Elsewhere than in happy England, the blessedness of whose sporting girls has been sung by Gilbert of the Savoy, it may not be the same; indeed it appeared in the newspapers a little while since that the minister of a fashionable church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, declared from his pulpit one Sunday that information had reached him that “women who went to church on Sunday, went to golf on Monday and swore like troopers!” When this was brought to the attention of the English ladies, they said that the information that had been given to the reverend gentleman was very likely true, as those ladies probably played such a very bad game. In England there was no occasion to make use of such expletives as were suggested, and a “Dash!” and “Oh, you naughty, naughty little ball” were generally found sufficient to meet the exigencies of the most trying situations. At one time there seemed to be some considerable rivalry and jealousy, quite characteristically feminine, between the British and American lady golfers. But Miss Rhona Adair as was went over to the States and won all her matches, the strain of the effort—believing that she really had the credit of her country at stake—being, so it was authoritatively said, largely responsible for the breakdown in her health that ensued. Then the Americans sent over a big team of ladies to try to capture our Ladies’ Championship with one of them. The battlefield was at Cromer, and such a scene was there as one by one the American flags were hauled down! At the end of the meeting the British lioness held undisputed possession of the field, and she placed the Cup on her tea table.

VIII

Perhaps there is more to be said for keeping one’s score for the round when playing a match than is allowed by many people who occasionally discuss this matter with some heat. It may be agreed at once that the golfer who consistently subordinates the importance and interest of his match to his anxiety regarding his aggregate score is to be condemned, and more than ever so when his reckoning of his figures is done openly and audibly, and when he is guilty of remarking, for example, a splendidly fought match being all square at the eighteenth tee, that he has a 4 left for 79, showing in what direction his strongest ambition lies for the time being. Such a person is an undesirable opponent, and a nuisance on the links. In match play the match is the thing, and those who do not want the match, but only the score, should go out alone with their caddies. Yet at the same time it must be remembered that a man’s scores for the round are often the only real indication that can be afforded him of knowing what exactly is his form for the time being, and how well or badly he is playing, and it is eminently desirable that he should from time to time be posted with this knowledge, which in either case should act as an incentive towards the improvement of his game. A man may be winning all his matches with two or three holes to spare, and if he is of a placid temperament and not given to any closely discriminating analysis of the details of his own game, he may often be living in a fool’s paradise with regard to the quality of his golf and the accuracy of his handicap. It may be true that handicaps are provided chiefly for match-play purposes, and that if a man can win half his matches with the handicap that is given him, there is not much cause for fault-finding; but, after all, handicaps are supposed to represent the relative strengths of all players, even though they do not, and it is reasonable to expect that the holder of a certain handicap should be able to go round his course, say, one time in three or four at a net score that would come out at par. One must doubt whether the average seven or eight handicap man does this, which, of course, leads to the usual conclusion that the general tendency in medium handicaps in these days is to make them too flattering.

And, again, when a player finds himself winning his match with so much ease that the match itself has really very little interest for him, if any at all, when he is playing well and his opponent’s game has gone completely to the dogs, it is surely pardonable for him to concentrate his chief attention upon his score for the round, so long as he does not do it obtrusively, and does nothing to indicate to his opponent that he has other things in mind besides the question as to whether he shall achieve victory at the twelfth or thirteenth hole. It is simply a matter of common sense and good manners, and all scores should be kept mentally, and should not be spoken of until the round is over. The keeping of a score will often urge a man to greater effort and the display of greater skill in a particular emergency, and will thus tend to the improvement of his game. Nearly all players of great skill and long experience agree that there is nothing in the world like much score play for the betterment of the golfer. It strengthens the sense of responsibility, and of the need for the utmost concentration of thought and effort upon every shot that is made, and when a golfer has taught himself to do this he has gone a long way towards the achievement of that severe self-discipline which is an essential characteristic of the good and sound player whose game has always to be feared. It is because they have not that self-discipline and have not cultivated that sense of responsibility, that the majority of amateurs are absolutely terrorised by a card and rendered incapable even of playing anything like their real game. They do not so much fear to make a bad shot when it will only mean a lost hole, which may be won back five minutes later; but it is a different thing when the bad shot may cost three strokes, which have to enter into the final reckoning. Yet the bad shot is equally bad in either case and ought to be equally regretted, but is not. And if an amateur does not keep some mental account of his score when engaged in matches, he has scarcely any other opportunity of practising medal play, since it is not customary and is not desirable that pairs should go out together matched with each other on the strokes for the round and not on holes.

Apart from the objections which have been urged against it, and which it has been suggested may not be quite so well founded as some people appear to think, one is inclined to fancy that in many cases one of the drawbacks to the continual counting of one’s score is the inclination that is bred in the player to self-deception, and in the course of our golf we come across many curious instances of it. The simplest and most frequent is the waiving of the lost stroke for a stymie. If the player’s ball is within two feet of the hole when the stymie is laid him, it may be legitimate enough for him to reckon that if he had been engaged in pure score play he would have holed the putt that he was in the actual circumstances unable to hole, and therefore to deduct a stroke from the actual number taken on the round. But in the weakness of their human nature many who are thus engaged in score counting go much farther than this in giving themselves the benefits of doubts. It is difficult or impossible for them to draw any line between that which it was very likely they would do and that which they might possibly do. If for the purposes of their score they give themselves the two-feet putt which they would have holed but for the stymie, then surely there can be no objection to giving themselves a thirty-inch putt, and if that, then one also at a yard, and a yard and a half—two yards, three yards, four. And, pursuing this process of self-cheating, you will find the golfer submitting it to himself that he may count it as one stroke to get down, when he is fifteen or twenty feet from the hole, on the reasoning that many a time in his life before he had holed such putts, and was certain to do so again, so why not this time?