Divots - P. G. Wodehouse

DIVOTS
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
My Daughter
LEONORA
WITHOUT WHOSE NEVER-FAILING
SYMPATHY AND ENCOURAGEMENT
THIS BOOK
WOULD HAVE BEEN FINISHED
IN
HALF THE TIME

PREFACE

Before leading the reader out on to this little nine-hole course, I should like to say a few words on the club-house steps with regard to the criticisms of my earlier book of Golf stories, The Clicking of Cuthbert. In the first place, I noticed with regret a disposition on the part of certain writers to speak of Golf as a trivial theme, unworthy of the pen of a thinker. In connection with this, I can only say that right through the ages the mightiest brains have occupied themselves with this noble sport, and that I err, therefore, if I do err, in excellent company.

Apart from the works of such men as James Braid, John Henry Taylor and Horace Hutchinson, we find Publius Syrius not disdaining to give advice on the back-swing (“He gets through too late who goes too fast”); Diogenes describing the emotions of a cheery player at the water-hole (“Be of good cheer. I see land”); and Doctor Watts, who, watching one of his drives from the tee, jotted down the following couplet on the back of his score-card:

Fly, like a youthful hart or roe,

Over the hills where spices grow.

And, when we consider that Chaucer, the father of English poetry, inserted in his Squiere’s Tale the line