The Art of Entertaining

by M. E. W. Sherwood

I will yield to fate and be a golfer, too!"

"The game of golf," says Andrew Lang, its gifted poet and its historian, "has been described as putting little balls into holes difficult to find, with instruments which are sadly inadequate and illy adapted to the purpose." Its learned home is St. Andrews, in Scotland, although its advocates give it several classic starting-points. Learned antiquarians seem to think that the name comes from a Celtic word, meaning club. It is certainly an ancient game, and some variation of it was known on the Continent under various names.

The game requires room. A golf-course of nine holes should be at least a mile and a half long, and a hundred and twenty feet wide. It is usual to so lay out the course that the player ends where he began. All sorts of obstructions are left, or made artificially,—running water, railway embankments, bushes, ditches, etc.

The game is played with a gutta-percha ball, about an inch and a quarter in diameter, and a variety of clubs, with wooden or iron heads, whose individual use depends on the position in which the ball lies. It is usual for each player to be followed by a boy, who carries his clubs and watches his ball, marking it down as it falls. Games are either singles,—that is, when two persons play against one another, each having a ball,—or fours, when there are two on each side, partners playing alternately on one ball.

The start is made near the club house at a place called the tee. Down the course, anywhere from two hundred and fifty to five hundred yards distant, is a level space, fifty feet square, called a putting-green, and in its centre is a hole about four and a half inches in diameter and of the same depth. This is the first hole, and the contestant who puts his ball into it in the fewest number of strokes wins the hole. As the score is kept by strokes, the ball that is behind is played first. In this way the players are always together.

For his first shot from the tee, the player uses a club called the driver. It has a wooden head and a long, springy, hickory handle. With this an expert will drive a ball for two hundred yards. It is needless to say that the beginner is not so successful. After the first shot a cleek is used; or if the ball is in a bad hole, a mashie; if it is necessary to loft it, an iron, and so on,—the particular club depending, as we have said, on the position in which the ball lies.

The first hole won, the contestants start from a teeing-ground close by it, and fight for the second hole, and so on around the course,—the one who has won the most holes being the winner.

"A fine day, a good match, and a clear green" is the paradise of the golfer, but it still can be played all the year and even, by the use of a red ball, when snow is on the ground. In Scotland and athletic England it is a game for players of all ages, though in nearly all clubs children are not allowed. It can be played by both sexes.

A beginner's inclination is to grasp a golf club as he would a cricket bat, more firmly with the right hand than with the left, or at times equally firm with both hands. Now in golf, in making a full drive, the club when brought back must be held firmly with the left hand and more loosely with the right, because when the club is raised above the shoulder, and brought round the back of the neck, the grasp of one hand or the other must relax, and the hand to give way must be the right hand and not the left. The force of the club must be brought squarely against the ball.

The keeping of one's balance is another difficulty. In preparing to strike, the player bends forward a little. In drawing back his club he raises, or should raise, his left heel from the ground, and at the end of the upward swing stands poised on his right foot and the toe or ball of the left foot. At this point there is danger of his losing his balance, and as he brings the club down, falling either forward or backward, and consequently either heeling or toeing the ball, instead of hitting it with the middle of the face. Accuracy of hitting depends greatly on keeping a firm and steady hold of the ground with the toe of the left foot, and not bending the left knee too much.