In the quality of the golfers that it has produced Hoylake can challenge the whole world of golf. It alone has found an amateur winner for the Open Championship—two of them. It bred the inimitable Mr. John Ball, who has six times won the Amateur Championship—1888, 1890, 1892, 1894, 1899, and 1907—and is good enough to win it again; and he won the Open Championship in 1890, thus holding both titles at the same time, being the only golfer who has ever done so, and quite likely who ever will. A brass tablet in the entrance-hall and the clock over the clubhouse commemorate this achievement. Mr. Harold Hilton, winner of the Open Championship in 1892 and 1897, and the amateur event in 1900 and 1901; and Mr. John Graham, junr., one of the finest products of Hoylake, despite his insistence that he is a Scottish golfer when it comes to International rivalry, is now at the top of his game, and is good enough to win one Championship and very nearly another. So true is it that a fine course will breed fine players.
Of the quality of Hoylake there can be no two opinions. It is one of the very best courses in the world, and by common consent it and Deal are the two best in England. Hoylake is far better than it looks. The first hole is generally cited as being one of the best two-shot holes to be found anywhere, and it is always good, no matter where the wind is. The course looks easy. If you play thoroughly well it may not be difficult, but if you do not play well it rends your miserable game asunder. What the possibilities for failure are, were exemplified in a grossly exaggerated manner in the final for the Amateur Championship in 1906, when the finalists halved the sixth hole, which goes by the name of the Briars, in 9! They lost their heads, and a player needs his head at Hoylake. The course is famous for its putting greens. They are fine now; but they are not what they used to be, for in the old days they were so magnificent that it used to be said by everybody that it was a sin to walk upon them. The water has in late years been drawn from the land for the purposes of wells, and this has made a difference.
St. Andrews and Hoylake—a noble pair!
III
Choosing a companion for a golfing holiday is at all times a serious business, and the light and thoughtless manner in which some young people perform the task is, in the interests of their own future golfing welfare, deplorable. Young people are mentioned advisedly, for you do not find the old golfers making their selections hastily, and they do not live to regret those that they make as do the hot-blooded youths who are swayed by the fancies of a moment. These select at haste, and often enough they repent bitterly before the golfing trip is over. The same nice discrimination should be exercised in the choice of such a companion as would be, or ought to be, in the choice of a wife, and many of the points that have to be taken into consideration are similar. As a general principle, youth should not mate with age for the purposes of many days’ golf in their own exclusive company away from home, when the twain are cast upon their own joint resources and have their pleasure and their welfare bound up with each other. It is a good thing that there should have been a long and tolerably thorough acquaintance beforehand, and there should be some approximate equality in playing ability. The partners to this important contract should be satisfied above all things that not only are their ideas and ideals concerning the good game largely alike, and their tastes outside the game agreeable to each other, but that their temperaments agree to the point that they can make the necessary allowances for each other’s waywardness of conduct, when in the interests of continued concord it becomes imperatively necessary that this should be done. Trials of this kind will have to be endured, and it is well that there should be a firm resolution beforehand to bear with each other’s weaknesses, satisfied always of the high value of the man. Some old golfers have said, and wisely, that it is a good thing to go away on a golfing holiday with a man and never to golf with him—to get the game with others, and to talk of it with the companion of the trip at breakfast in the morning and at dinner when the play for the day is over; and there can be little doubt that in this maxim there is much wisdom, though it is not necessary to carry the recommendation to the extreme. Too much familiarity with the game of one man breeds some contempt for it, even though it be a game that is more remunerative in holes than that possessed by the other; and while there are no rivals like old rivals, still, if their rivalry is uninterrupted it becomes dull and uninteresting.
IV
There is an old golfer who says that it cost him many weeks of failure, and many hundreds of pounds, to come by that experience in conducting a golfing holiday as enabled him to make a complete success of such always afterwards. For the benefit of others of the smallest experience, who are liable to err grievously, he offers the following precepts:—
“However keen one may be, and however much one may enjoy the excellent golf that is obtained on a good seaside course, it is a great mistake to play too much during a short holiday, and failure to appreciate this fact has completely spoiled more golfing holidays than any other cause. The early keenness is followed by carelessness, and after a while the game becomes somewhat of a taskmaster. Then one’s game suffers severely, and even a strong physical constitution is hardly equal to three rounds a day kept up constantly. Yet that is what many holiday golfers try to do, and when they have finished their vacation they are sick of the mention of golf, and wish they had gone fishing or shooting instead. My advice is never to play more than two rounds a day, and to play no golf at all on two days of the week; whilst, if the holiday lasts a month, the man will be all the better for a four or five days’ rest in the middle of it. He will then enjoy all his golf, and the entire holiday will be much more of a success.
“On a holiday course, where there are many visitors, one sees a greater variety of clubs and golfing implements than anywhere else, and numerous novelties of a more or less attractive character. However favourably many of these ideas may strike you, do your best to resist the inclination to invest in them, because, if you once begin doing this, you will have a dreadful quantity of rubbish to take home. A golfer who thinks several times before he buys a new club when he is at home, somehow seems to be a very irresponsible creature when he is holidaying, and will purchase wonderful brasseys, niblicks, and putters at the [slightest] provocation.