CHAPTER XXI
A MORE LIBERAL POLICY AT ST. ANDREWS
In those days Professor Tait used to be a great deal at St. Andrews, in the intervals, which were wide, of his professional duties in Edinburgh. He used to play a round of golf, generally by himself, generally talking to the ball all the time, as if asking it why it behaved as it did, and very frequently laughing at it—for he was essentially a laughing philosopher—long before the ordinary golfer had his breakfast. Six o'clock, it was said, was his hour for starting, and the rest of the day, when he came back, he had at his own command for study, of which he did an enormous amount, for tobacco, of which he consumed a mighty deal, and for chaff and talk, of which he was most genially fond. He was a lover of humanity, and not even the biggest fool on the links (which is a liberal order) was made conscious of his folly when it came up against the Professor's learning. He used to let me come into his laboratory in Edinburgh, and in return used to employ me in driving balls at a revolving plate of clay and all sorts of experiments.
Poor young Freddie was not yet of the stature to drive very fiercely, though he was already fiercely keen. He was at school at Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, where Fred Lemarchand, who had been at Oxford with me, was a master. Lemarchand putted the weight for the University, being a very strong fellow, and developed into a very useful golfer. And he, apparently, made it his business to get "rises" out of young Freddie, telling him in chaff that the Scots did not know how to play golf: that Johnny Ball and I were better than their best amateurs, and so on. I have always wondered whether this chaff helped to incite Freddie to become the great golfer that he was. Golf, to be sure, was bred in him—his eldest brother Jack was a fine player—but perhaps Lemarchand's chaff gave him an added zeal. I remember him first as a stalwart, very cheery little boy hitting a ball about with very slight respect for human life or limb.
It was about this time that I moved a resolution at a general meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club that their local rules, such as that touching the dreary palisaded cabbage patch magniloquently styled the Stationmaster's Garden, should be taken out of the body of the rules and be printed under a separate heading, in order that the many Clubs which were being established in divers places might adapt more easily for their own use the rules capable of universal employment, and might make their own separate local rules besides. This was passed, and was a useful move for those other Clubs, which heretofore had included in their own rules regulations dealing with a Stationmaster's Garden, a railway and other "amenities" which had no existence at all on their courses.
And a little later a Committee, of which I was a member, was appointed under Lord Kingsburgh to revise and amend the rules. We worked hard at the job and evolved something that we thought very admirable, whereupon Sir Alexander Kinloch, on the presentation of our work to the general meeting of the Club, proposed "that the Committee be thanked for their labours and that the result be put into the fire." I think if it had been any other than Sir Alexander that had brought forward the proposal we should have been very angry, but we all knew him and liked him too well to mind. He was rather a specially licensed person with a knack of putting things into words which might give offence if anyone chose to take it. "What's the good," he said once, to another general meeting, "of all this talk about first-class players? There are only three first-class amateurs, Johnny Ball, Johnny Laidlay and Horace Hutchinson." That is as it may be; but evidently it was not a remark that was likely to be received with universal favour.
Sir Alexander, father of the present baronet, Sir David, and also of Frank,[5] the writer on golf, was not a first-class player by any means, but he had all the qualities that are connoted by that phrase which was much more often heard then than now—a "first-rate partner in a foursome." He was one of those who liked his caddie to point out to him the line of the putt. Taylor, the one-armed man, who became the caddie-master at St. Andrews later, used to carry for him, and there is a picture of him in the Badminton Book showing the line. We used to be allowed to do a great deal in the way of brushing loose impediments, often more imaginary than real, out of the line with the club: there was no rule against the caddies indicating the line by a club laid right down on that line, and a cunning caddie would often select the roughest spot on the line on which to lay it—with the result that when the club was lifted again that spot was just a little less rough than it had been before. Some of these good old "partners in a foursome" were not at all pleased when the rule was so changed that the caddie was not permitted to touch the line in giving this indication. At first the modification was only to the extent of requiring that the line should be pointed out only by the end of the shaft of the club, and not by the head, but this too was liable to abuse, for the effect often was to leave a little mark on the turf, which served as a guide for the eye.
I do not know whether our general recommendations regarding the rules were actually consumed by fire, as advised by Sir Alexander Kinloch, but at all events they were not passed. They were remitted back to Lord Kingsburgh, as a committee of one, to revise, and he brought them back with one only, so far as I know, modification of importance. It was a modification of great importance to the slow player and the short driver, and probably is largely responsible for the modern congestion of greens. It is also responsible, no doubt, for the saving of some lives; but they would be, at best, the lives of short drivers, who, perhaps, do not matter. There used, even of old, to be a rule that parties behind should not drive off the tee until those in front had played their seconds. Obviously this put people who could drive only a hundred and fifty yards very much at the mercy of others coming behind who could drive two hundred yards. In the new version of the rules, according to Lord Kingsburgh, the parties behind had to wait to drive off, not only till those in front had played their seconds, but also until they were out of range. Manifestly that gave the shorter drivers a much better chance for their lives. At the same time it delivered the longer drivers behind right into their hands. They could be as slow as they pleased, and had no fear, under the law, of being harassed by those who came after them. Lord Kingsburgh himself was a short driver, and of course sympathized with his kind. I imagine he made golfing life much more pleasant for himself for the remainder of his days by this enactment. For his version, which altered the old in hardly any other respect than this, was passed by the meeting. There were more short drivers than there are now, in the days of the solid "gutty" ball.
The best of the players more or less resident at St. Andrews in the later eighties were Leslie Balfour, Jim Blackwell (it was extraordinary to what extent he lost his game after a residence of some years in South Africa), Mure Ferguson, Andy Stuart and David Lamb. Leslie I have always regarded as one of the soundest golfers I ever met. "If you're playing your best you'll beat him, but if you're playing anything below your best he'll beat you." This used to be Johnny Laidlay's verdict on him, and it always seemed to me to express the reliable quality of Leslie's game very well. I cannot but think that Mure Ferguson became a better golfer in the later years than he was in these early days at St. Andrews, but it is rather difficult for me to do justice to the great game that he had in him because he seldom happened to play his best against me. I have seen him play great matches. In the amateur championship at Hoylake he was in the final with Johnny Ball, and though that champion of champions was four up at one moment of the match, Mure had him square with two holes to go—a great performance! Then Johnny went out for a great second shot to the then seventeenth (now the sixteenth) hole, right across the corner of the field, and so gained the green with his second; and that stroke virtually settled the match. Johnny asked me afterwards if I thought he was right in going for it. All I had to say was, "Absolutely, if you felt that you could do it." It all lay in that—in this confidence in himself. And no man knows Hoylake distances better. No doubt Mure was, and even is, a fine match-player, especially a fine finisher of those few last holes when the match is to be decided by them. David Lamb, brother of Henry, who has been often mentioned, was a great player in his day, but he could not make much of the game unless all was going right with him. And the quality of match-playing depends very largely, as I think, on the ability to make something of the game (if possible sufficient to avert defeat) when things are not going kindly. But of all these St. Andrews' players, just a little the best of the bunch, in my opinion, was Andy Stuart at that particular moment. His golfing day was rather a short one, but few folks realize how great a player he was, when at his best.