The Spirit of the Links

by Henry Leach

And it shall come as a good recommendation in this matter that the golfer who is the favourite hero of us all, as he was a pattern of the golfing virtues, made a match-book for himself while he was still playing the schoolboy golf, and kept it continuously for the rest of his time. Freddie Tait’s match-book was just what we might expect it to be. It was a very honest thing, and Mr. Low, who has handled it and copied some of it for the deep interest of us all, remarks on the way in which the brave soldier golfer never spared himself, his partner, nor his opponents, but dealt out praise and censure with a level hand. One day, though he had halved his round, he says, “Played as bad a round as possible”; and at another time his comment is, “Never played worse with the exception of a few iron shots.” Then as to a foursome it is, “The characteristic of the game was the bad play of both”; and of his partner in another match he remarks, “The play of Mr. —— was feeble in the extreme.”

There were eight column divisions in Tait’s match-book. First there was the place for the date, then for the name of the links, and the third for the statement of the parties to the match. The fourth column was for the mention of the odds of the handicap if any, or for the name of the competition if he was engaged in one. Then there was one column for holes won and another for holes lost, a broad one for “remarks,” and a last little one at the side of the page for the total of the score. Generally the “remarks” were brief and pointed, and it is these which make the record of the play of the most beloved golfer we have known so real and human, so that it is a pleasure to sit by the fire and create some fancies of these matches. Now and then there is a little humour; here and there a touch of sarcasm at the expense of “F. G. T.,” as he generally referred to himself. Round by round there is the full story of the way in which he won the championship at Sandwich, and the next entry concerns the very next match that he played, which was the day after at Rye, when, with his honours new upon him, he essayed the task of playing the best ball of Mr. H. S. Colt and Mr. J. O. Fairlie. The remarks run: “H. S. C. and J. O. F. too strong for the golfed-out Champion, to whom they showed no mercy. H. S. C. and J. O. F. both played a good game and did some very fine holes.” Here there is a 6 in the “Lost” column, and it is a notable thing that this, on 23rd May, was the first figure that had appeared in this column of defeat since 16th April, though golf was being played almost every day. In his comments on the final of that same championship he twice pays compliments to the pluck of Mr. Hilton, who in the game was very soon left without the [slightest] chance of victory, and was beaten by a full eight holes. The gods would never permit the favourite Freddie to be beaten by the finest player of his time, and that player now refers to his early engagements with the soldier as the day when Tait “commenced his career as the slaughterer of Hilton.” Another day we find Freddie revelling in two glorious matches with Andrew Kirkaldy on the new course at St. Andrews. In the morning he lost by a couple of holes, but in the afternoon he was the winner on the last green. “Another splendid match,” he rejoices; “both in great form. F. G. T. only halved the third hole by carelessly moving his ball with hand while removing a piece of grass. The hole was played out and won by F. G. T., but he had, of course, to lose a stroke, according to the rules of golf. This unfortunate accident made the difference of one hole. A. K., 80, a magnificent score. F. G. T., in: 4 3 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 = 37.” Here is another comment, “R. T. B. very fair. Self good at first, but got too many up, and then got careless, with the usual result.” He lost that match by a hole. Another time, when he was playing the best of two balls, he wrote: “Played badly. The two balls also bad.” That match was fittingly halved. In this way we can follow the happy Freddie all the way through the spring and summer to the end of the year on all the best links that are to be found, and these judgments of his will serve as models to other men who in this small matter would copy the methods of the perfect golfer.

There is this entry in the match-book alongside the date 31st July 1888, concerning a match with Mr. Norman Playfair: “Driving very poor. Put a ball through a man’s hat and had to pay five shillings.” Young Freddie, then only eighteen years of age, went to old Tom Morris to complain of his ill-luck in the matter, but Tom answered him wisely, “Ah, Master Freddie, ye may be vera thankful that it’s only a hat, and no’ an oak coffin ye hae to pay for.” Even now, when the sad happenings of the South African War, which at the time so wrung our heart-strings with misery, have been somewhat mellowed by time, the great consoler, it is impossible to glide into this channel of reminiscence without feeling that the pleasure of it is touched with melancholy that the body that held that noble soul should be resting among the trees by the banks of the Riet River.

VI

There is nothing like the winds of March for testing the golfer in every department of his play. Quite timid golfers are sometimes heard to say that they don’t mind rain; but if a man does not mind big winds, regards them both from the sporting and scientific standpoints, and manages to make some respectable golf while they are in charge of the air, he is a worthy player, and he may make his mark some day. It often happens that you can apply test after test to two different golfers, and they will both answer equally to them; but the wind test will separate them at once. The man who can play the real game in a high wind, and use it to his advantage at every opportunity, knows golf as others do not. He is a finished player, and he rather likes the days of March for the rich sport that they afford—the real big game of the links. The other man, when he hears the wind playing like a German band round the side of the house as he tries to get himself off to sleep at night, thinks to himself that he will have to give up the idea of golf in the morning. He should not. Even if he never learns the scientific treatment of wind in golf, he would find his game improved generally and made more powerful by playing it at times like these under severe difficulties, and it is worth playing in a wind if only to taste the sweet joys of golfing in a calm afterwards, just as there is one point of satisfaction in getting wet through on the links because the change afterwards is so delicious.

You always find that a golfer is very much the better for a short season on a very windy course. When he goes back to his home course, very likely inland and protected, driving seems such a simple, easy thing, and he lets out at his tee shots with a freedom and a certainty which make for a greater boldness and strength in his game. North Berwick is one of the windiest courses. You do get wind there in the spring months, and there are hundreds of golfers who testify to the good that a short stay there has done to their game. They have simply got to learn to golf in all kinds of winds. It is like throwing a non-swimmer into seven feet of water with only a thin piece of rope round his middle. He very soon invents a way of making greater security and comfort for himself. Stay at North Berwick long enough, and it may affect your style for life. Mr. Robert Maxwell has a peculiar punching, but withal very powerful style, which is attributed to his upbringing at North Berwick. A man disposed to probe very deep down for causes and effects might arrive at the conclusion that the reason why, speaking very generally, there are better players and better courses, and more of each on the east coast of Scotland than on the west, is because it happens that the links there are more exposed, and there are more windy days upon them than on those on the other side of the country. Not that there are not big winds very frequently to be dealt with in the neighbourhood of Troon and Prestwick, which surely have their full share, and it was at a championship at Prestwick that old Willie Park delivered himself of his famous remark, “Guid God! When I get ma club up I canna get it doon again!” so strongly was the wind blowing on that occasion.

VII

In the spring the professionals come tumbling on to the stage of golf once more with their happy welcome cry, “Here we are again.” Sometimes in the middle of the summer season people are apt to say that we get at least enough of these professional competitions, and that it would be agreeable if we had a little more time to think of our own golf in all its varied charm, instead of our attention being invited day by day to the many permutations and combinations of “the quartette” in exhibition matches, and the aspirations of such as Jones among those next to them. But what a dull season it would be if Vardon and Braid were not up against Taylor and Herd somewhere or other—it does not matter where—just as in the olden time, or Herd and Braid did not show once again at the little course of Slocum-on-Mudbury that there was something wrong with their running in that never-to-be-forgotten foursome when four hundred sovereigns were at stake. And then when Rowland Jones is included in one of these foursome combinations, we say, quite pleased, “Ha, Jones is coming on! Jones is going to assert himself!” One day Jack White is in again—that happy-hearted Jack, who came by a great championship in 1904 at Sandwich, where records were falling in every round—and then we say to ourselves very good-naturedly, “I hope Jack will get on to his drive again in one of these matches!” Or the fourth man may be Tom Vardon, and that is very interesting, because Tom is a great big sportsman who is stuffed tight with the effervescing joy of life. If it is Andrew Kirkaldy, as it is occasionally, we rub our hands and observe, “Grand matchplayer is Sam! Now we shall see how a foursome should be played! Good as the best is Sam!”

The fact of the matter is, that these professional matches and competitions are now a fast and integral part of our golfing system. We may think that we could do without them, and in the summer-time we rail constantly against them, and say that they never would be missed. But how we should miss them! Golfing life would not be the same if there were not occasions to make such almost daily observations as those just quoted. The season would be without salt, and our little amateur combats would seem to be lacking in an unknown stimulus that was always there before.

Then what a void in golfing life would there be if there were not constant occasion to express admiration for the supremacy and the prowess of the triumvirate—Harry Vardon, Braid, and Taylor. When we are too frequently told of the achievement and the skill of the heroes of the olden time, it is well to think of what the triumvirate has done and still can do. Perhaps not many golfers, even among those who pay faithful attention to such matters, have a proper sense of the amazing record of these three men. I had occasion to analyse it lately, and I believe not in any other sport have the periods of three such champions coincided as they have done in golf during the last few years. It is a strange thing that the fates should have pitchforked Braid, Vardon, and Taylor into the arena at the same time, each man being so much above all outside the three. It is as if Ormonde, Donovan, and Flying Fox had been in the same race for the Derby. In one sense it seems a waste of exceptional talent on one period, to the possible impoverishment of another, but golf spectators and players should appreciate the advantage of the times in which they live, for it is unlikely that three such golfers will ever be to the fore at the same time again after these three have gone their way, and it is as certain as anything that a hundred years from now the golf world will speak reverently of the great triumvirate of the early days of the twentieth century. It will certainly be remembered that after this triumvirate had been established eleven years in each other’s company, they wound up a championship first, second, and third against the biggest field that had ever contested a championship, this being at Muirfield in 1906.