The Spirit of the Links

by Henry Leach

In some places, as already hinted, they have been trying a strange kind of game called “a four-ball foursome against bogey,” being a blend of many things most objectionable to the old spirit. This is the kind of golf that would be exceedingly popular if people generally went mad with the revolutionary idea and held executions in Trafalgar Square. In the meantime it does not “take on.” And a new kind of multi-match lately came over from America. [They] play, say, six a side, but only one ball to each side, the whole dozen players starting off together. They do not play alternately, but each man is chosen for the team according to his special abilities. One man is a specialist in long driving, another in his brassey play, a third with his irons, a fourth with the short approaches, a fifth with his niblick, and a sixth with his putter. When within fifty yards of the green the captain sings out for No. 4, and No. 5 is wanted when the ball is in a gutter. A man might not have a shot to play the whole way round. Great skill would be needed in the selection of the team. For a match on a short course the wise captain might leave out his brassey man and put in, say, a fisherman, if there were many water hazards on that course. But it is not golf, and never will be.

From the same source there emanates another idea in competitions. This is for stroke play, and all the men who enter play the first hole, one after the other. Those men who take most strokes to it retire from the competition. The others proceed, and there is the same weeding out process at the second hole, and so on until there are only two players left, and then the first man who wins a hole from the other wins the competition.

A possibility, which is none the less dreadful because there is some good common sense in the idea from which it springs, is that there will be examinations in the rules, which all must pass either before being elected to full membership of a golf club or before being allowed to take part in competitions. It is a certain fact that two golfers out of every three—at least—are hazy on many important points in the rules. Three British clubs have already held such examinations, with startling results. Scratch men were plucked! How curious it would be if the favourite for a championship were disqualified in this way. Of course the examiners would trip up the candidates by tricky riders to the rules, and as my artist friend, Mr. E. W. Mitchell, suggested, good questions will be: “A is your ball, B is your banker’s ball, and C is the hole (all being within a circle ten inches in diameter). Play one off two and lose!” Also, “What happens when a bull sits on your ball—(1) in match; (2) in medal play?”

As it is said, there is no telling what we may have next, particularly as a patent was recently applied for on behalf of a new club which had a sliding lid bottom, covering a receptacle in the head of the club, in which the golfer might keep his matches and his money!

VI

Now and then a section of the golfing community has the appearance of fretting for a new government of the game. The freedom that it has always enjoyed, and in which it is superior to any other game that has a right to be compared to it for quality, interest, and popularity, has become irksome. It is felt that there can be disadvantages in too much freedom, and so these people sigh to be placed under a yoke—a yoke of their own choosing, but none the less stern and powerful and, above all, active. These agitations, if they are to be dignified with such a name, commonly begin in the dullest days of winter, when both links and livers are abnormally heavy, and they flicker out again in the spring. Usually the establishment of a new county golfing union is the signal for the commencement of the argument in favour of the deposition of St. Andrews and the establishment of a new parliament of golf. By this time county unions are no novelty. The Yorkshire and the Nottinghamshire Unions—and particularly the former—are now old-established and flourishing institutions; but latterly this movement towards unions has much increased, and Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and others have joined in it and settled their constitutions. Then there are in existence the Welsh Union, the Sussex Union, and various others of smaller activity. The formation of these unions has been in itself a proceeding of some significance; but the establishment of the new Midland Association is greater, for here you have three or four unions making common cause for the furtherance of their own ideas and projects, and becoming a compact, circumscribed, and very nearly autonomous community, taking a considerable piece of the golfing map to themselves, and embracing no small or unimportant section of the golfing population. First you had the county unions; now the grouping of these unions into associations. Obviously, the next and easy step will be a combination of associations. Yorkshire and Wales might come to an understanding with the Midlands, and before one could shout “Fore!” there might be the whole country under the guidance, not to say domination, of a union of associations. Members of clubs would per se be affiliated to it, and would give tacit allegiance to it. That is simply a possibility of evolution.

So far the programmes of the unions and associations are simple and unpretentious. They will start country competitions, inter-county tournaments, standardise handicaps, regulate local rules, and so forth. Unpretentious in a sense these matters are; but yet they will make for much in the whole sum of golf procedure. Then there are no authoritative rules for bogey play which many people want; the associations may make them for themselves, and make them binding upon their members, and give rulings upon points of dispute or difficulty that may arise in regard to them, since St. Andrews will have nothing to do with bogey. They will do all the many things that St. Andrews is too indifferent to do.

There you have it! How about the coming of the day when, old-established, firm, and powerful, the combined associations find that they are doing nearly everything, and that St. Andrews is doing almost nothing? Will it not be an easy thing, and one which will suggest itself, to cut the knot that ties them to the old and respected guardian of our golf, and to go forth with a new and revolutionary programme of government, which shall include even the very championships and the rules themselves? This is not a fanciful speculation; it is logical and—as some who have brought themselves to the serious study of the future would say—almost inevitable. It would be according to the natural processes of history.

Let them disclaim as they please, be as loyal to the existing order of things as possible, it is still the fact that these unions and associations are a menace to St. Andrews. By evolution from them rather than by direct establishment is a British Golfing Union likely to come about, if one ever does. This is essentially a democratic movement. With the vast influx of new players the feeling in golf is infinitely more democratic than it was five years ago, and the people are now chafing at the indifference of St. Andrews and the championship group of clubs, and are calling for a ruling body that will give them new and simpler laws, that will regulate the championships better, and hold them on a greater variety of courses, organise inter-county competitions, and so on. St. Andrews—by which is meant the Royal and Ancient Club—is the old and self-established, almost hereditary House of Lords that dozes and does not mind, with no second chamber between it and the people. The people say they want a representative and active House of Commons. This allegory works out perfectly to the point that Ireland is fuming and fretting at the neglect with which she is treated.