The Spirit of the Links

by Henry Leach

In this matter we have the principle of the community of golfers’ interests in full play, and it seems that the proper recognition of the society and its right to the privileges that it seeks will be only another form of the same principle, and one scarcely less advanced than that which obtains at present. For already a fair proportion of the members of a club are members also of one or other societies, and the time is coming when it will be the exception for the club golfer not to be a member of a society. When this time arrives, it will evidently be necessary to apply this principle referred to, partly for the general good and enjoyment, and partly because any club that did not, and that withheld privileges to societies that were granted them by other clubs, would place all its own members who belonged to such societies in a very unpleasant position. Two rules seem to be called for. The first is, that in order that this principle shall always act fairly, and that no man shall get what he is not in a sense entitled to, it shall be enacted that each member of a society shall also be a member of a club in the district in which the society chiefly carries on its operations. The second is, that in all cases of society visits to clubs’ courses, full green fees shall be paid, and that in no pecuniary sense shall the society be under any obligation to the club. The whole question is really one of very great importance, and those who are at the head of club and society affairs would do well to be giving to it their serious consideration, for nothing would be more unfortunate than the creation of any misunderstanding which might lead to trouble in the future.

VII

The other day there was a little house-party of golfers for a week-end, and it was a most delightful gathering in all respects—fine weather, a rattling good seaside links, with putting greens that inspired the soul of the player to fine flights of genius, and a host of the very best golfing type, in whom is embodied all the best traditions and sportsmanship of the game. Sternly contested singles in the morning of the first day, with the yellow autumn sun shining and that pleasant nip in the air that braces the golfer to great efforts when he takes the wood out of his bag; a hard-fought foursome in the afternoon; and then as they dressed to go down for dinner on the evening of the first day, they reflected upon the magnificent opportunities of the golfing life and the poor state of those who were not such as they were then. Dinner, the glass of old port, piquant stories of the links and the recounting of brave deeds in fine matches, and then by and by the testing of various putting theories on the carpet—O! the happy, happy golfer.

Forty years upon the links had one by one only served to increase the host’s enthusiasm for the game of games. In all things he was the golfer first and the ordinary individual afterwards. Like all experienced players, he was inclined to be dogmatic and, as some would say, old-fashioned. But when you say that a golfer is old-fashioned you are paying him a very high compliment; you are placing his portrait in an exclusive gallery of the old masters of the game who built it up and endowed it with traditions such as are the envy of all others. The old-fashioned golfer nearly always belongs to the best type of the fine old English or Scottish gentleman. But this host had still original ideas of his own, and sometimes within the walls of his own house he will tell of them, or let them slip by accident, which he might very much fear to do when in the company of his colleagues of the Royal and Ancient on the occasion of his bi-annual pilgrimages to St. Andrews. So on the second morning, when the party was at breakfast and eager to arrange the matches of the day, its curiosity was somewhat stirred by the remark that he made to madame as she was lading the blue cups with tea, that last night he “went round in 78.” The lady of the house nodded and smiled, asked sympathetically if he had had any luck at the short holes, and was assured that he had taken 3 to one and 4 to the other, but had got his 78 by the aid of a grand—yes, by gad, a really corking 3 at the last hole! On the whole, it was gathered he was driving well, but his iron play was not all that it might have been—putting splendid. Now nothing had been heard before of any such fine performance as this, as surely there would have been if, as it appeared, it was of such recent date. The company was stirred with a desire for knowledge as to the when and the how, so that they might not be laggard in their compliments upon the making of such an evidently pretty piece of golf. A 3 at the eighteenth, too! If that was the same eighteenth the flag upon whose putting green we could just see from the window now, it was a 3 to be spoken of with admiration and profound respect. And so one at the table murmured that they had a desire for knowledge upon this 78, which so evidently interested the chief, but he pooh-poohed the curiosity, and said that the recounting of that particular round would do better for a wet day than for a morning when all were so keen to be playing the real golf. The “real” golf; so there was a qualification imparted to that round of 78, and now they would not be denied. Come! come! And so they had the secret out.

It appeared that though he looked so well and hale, the chief was not one of those happy beings who after their days upon the links go to rest at night and drop clean away into a dreamless sleep. There is usually a preliminary period of insomnia, which is an unpleasant relic of some hard times that he had abroad in the middle years of his life. It is an effort with him to “drop off,” and many and various have been the devices that in his time he has employed for wooing Morpheus to his nightly service. For a long time he played the old game of shepherdry. When the candle was extinguished and his head was laid upon the pillow, he set up before him an imaginary hedge, a big thick hedge which divided one large field from another, and in this hedge there was just one small gap through which one sheep could pass at a time, or two by squeezing when in a hurry. Why the sheep should be driven from one field into the other no man can say; but on countless nights by many poor sufferers from too much wakefulness, millions upon millions of sheep have been driven through this same gap in the hedge. Through it they are hurried in their ones and twos in a seemingly never-ending line. There is no limit to this flock, and it is of the essence of the trick that is being played against the enemy, insomnia, that the shepherd shall attend most strictly to his duties, and never for a single moment shall let his thoughts wander to other and more real affairs. And so at last the active brain gives way, and as the tail-end of one big sheep is seen disappearing through the gap a thick haze comes down upon the fields, and the shepherd and his sheep are lost until the morning.

The chief was shepherd for some years, and it was only by the odd accident of dwelling fondly for a few minutes, as he laid himself down in bed, upon the fine things he had done in one great match that day that he came by a change of nightly occupation. With the links laid out before him on the inner side of his eyelids, he played every shot again, and if the truth must be told, he played some of them twice, and in this way he proved to his own immense satisfaction that, soul-satisfying as had been his play that day, his round was morally at least three strokes better than it had worked out. He played his round from the first tee to the eighteenth green on the eyelid links once, and so pleasant was the play that, like the gourmand golfer, he must needs play it again, shot by shot; and a third time he set out with his clubs. But this time he was tiring. The two mental rounds that had gone before had told their tale, and he was constantly finding his wayward ball in the rough, and making sometimes fine recoveries with his iron clubs, and sometimes taking two to get clear again. You see he always played the game. Perfection in golf is not given to any man, and even in the eyelid game one must pull and slice at times, must now and again socket with the irons, and take one’s eye off the little white ball. And so it happened that at last the tired brain surrendered, and upon the fifteenth green, with the match still unfinished—one up and three to go—he fell asleep.

Thenceforth the shepherdry was given up, and he took on the eyelid golf instead. Two rounds he played every night, and every time he played the game, refusing to allow himself things he had not clearly seen himself do, and not taking unto himself the power of doing miracles or of always playing the perfect golf. In that there would have been great monotony, just as there would be if we always played perfect golf in our real life upon the links. He never made a carry in this nightly imagination that he had not made in daylight, never laid an iron shot dead, or holed a putt the like of which he had not done with real club and ball. Some nights he would be off his game, and his score would run far up into the nineties, and he would be badly beaten. On those nights he might go to sleep a little sooner than usual. On others he would be playing the best game of his youth. In general he found the occupation much more pleasant and agreeable to his tastes than the shepherdry, and it is a curious thing, which one must believe since he said so, that these night rounds, with all their thoughts and their minor anxieties, actually did something towards the improvement of the real game that was played in the daytime. The player now and then obtained new and good ideas, and he was taught to be a little more thoughtful than perhaps he had been in the past. By and by the secret of this play became too much for him to keep, so he unfolded the story of his eyelid games to the lady partner of his life, who, since the real service that they did to him was evident to her sympathetic mind, treated it with becoming seriousness. This was the explanation of the 78 that was spoken of at breakfast-time that morning, and in it there is a hint that might sometime prove of service to those who, like the host of that week-end, are sometimes troubled for want of that ability to loose their thoughts to sleep.

VIII

One does not see St. Andrews at its best at a time of a championship, or at any other time when there are great crowds in the streets and on the courses, and swarming round about the clubhouse and outside the shops of the clubmakers overlooking the eighteenth green. It is not its natural self then; it is at its worst. I do not like it when the trippers pour in from Glasgow. One cannot resist the suspicion that many of them are not as good golfers as they ought to be, and that they love St. Andrews for what they save by her, being the only course in the world on which a man may play for nothing; with a kindly Corporation and a great club spending large sums of money upon it. To keep those marvellous greens in their fine state they employ a genius among greenkeepers, who is Hugh Hamilton, who is the successor of Tom Morris, who was the successor of Allan Robertson. It may seem strange to some that the play should be made without any charge, but St. Andrews would not be the same, and would lose rather than gain in dignity, if it were not free. The time to see it at its best is in the spring, and it is fine again in the late autumn, when the mere holiday-makers have gone back to their cities and workshops.

The only time when a crowd is bearable at St. Andrews is on the autumn medal day, and then, indeed, it is as if the tradition and the sanctity of the place are intensified. This surely is the great Celebration Day of golf. With its dignity, ceremony, tradition, crowds, and excitement, it is really very much like a Lord Mayor’s Day. Old folks who may have never played, wee bairns who are only just beginning to think they will play when they can walk a little better, are all straining to excitement because it is the club’s medal day, the day of the Royal Medal, and of the captain’s playing himself in, and of the firing of the guns. From north, south, east, and west—many of them from London—the members of the Royal and Ancient Club foregather for the occasion. There is a hushed solemnity overhanging the place. Something is about to be done that used to be done in the days of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers, and the men on the links on this occasion feel themselves to be the descendants—as often enough they are in blood—of the great golfers of old who made the early chapters of the history of the game.