The Spirit of the Links Part 7

When these thoughts had chased each other through the minds of the great British quartette for half an hour, someone got up aloft, and, like the widow Tw.a.n.key--or Sister Anne was it?--in the pantomime, said that he thought he saw something coming. Immediately afterwards he confessed he was mistaken, but he had scarcely admitted the mistake when the original statement was renewed with vigour. There _was_ something, and eventually it was made out as a railway train. The four great British golfers were saved for Mexico, and they would yet win champions.h.i.+ps and dollars--at least they might do, as they might now prefer to put it. It seemed that after the train had parted company with its last carriage, in about a quarter of an hour somebody in the moving section happened to notice the circ.u.mstance, and remarked that it was rather curious that a carriage should be left down the line in that manner, and that there should be no fuss made. The matter being reported to the officials on the train they decided to put back and see if they could find the carriage containing, among others, the party of four great British golfers. As we have already seen, they did so. Then the whole train moved on again towards Mexico, and "Andra" went to sleep in his berth dreaming, perhaps, of the old course at home and of his doing the home hole in 2.

The four British golfers found things rather dull for the next two days, for nothing in particular happened while they were running through fifteen hundred miles of woods and prairie. On Sat.u.r.day morning they got out of the train at San Antonio, Texas, in time for breakfast, and the same evening they reached Laredo, the Mexican border, where their luggage was examined. Spanish being the prevailing language, this process proved rather troublesome, especially as the officials had varying and peculiar views as to the goods on which duty should be paid.

Some of the party had to pay it on their golf clubs, and others escaped.

The train had hardly got going again when it was pulled up on account of an obstruction in front, and it was three hours before a further advance was made, the impediment being a freight-train which had run off the track. By this time Kirkaldy was sighing for a ride on the North British, and White was hoping that he might be allowed the privilege of making his last journey on earth on the beautiful South-Western. But there was more adventure to come.

The four great British golfers had heard awful tales of Mexicans and what they were capable of, but they understood the place was more civilised now--must be, as there was golf there. In the dead of night, while the famous quartette were wrapped in slumber, when White found himself back on to his drive, when Herd had nothing but good luck for a whole season, when Jones was pipping one Braid for the champions.h.i.+p nearly every time, and when the fourth of the party of British golfers was doing a round on the links in Elysium in eighteen under par--there were robbers going through the car! They were real robbers, such as are commonly found on these trains in these parts. They went through the train "in the most approved style," as it was said of them, and before the first streaks of the Mexican dawn had lit up the sky there were many men in that golfing train who were much poorer than when they went to sleep. One of the Boston amateurs going to the same tournament lost six hundred dollars, his gold watch, and trunk checks, and several others found that various sums of money belonging to them had disappeared. And how fared the four British golfers? Was it for fear of him, for respect, or for admiration, that the Mexican robber did not concern himself at all with the great British golfer? In due course they landed at Mexico City on Monday morning. The four British golfers were much impressed by the peculiar dress of the Mexicans, which they even found to be affected by the caddies. Andrew spoke a few preliminary words of greeting to the boys, but they only smiled, not understanding Scotch. But they showed a strong disposition to be good friends, an att.i.tude which, as was subsequently discovered, was not entirely because they were great golfers. Caddies are much the same the wide world over. Of the further pursuit of the treasure by the four great British golfers, and of their many disappointments, the story has been already told.

XII

A celebrated golfer, being in one of his lighter moods, discussed with me the future a.s.sociation of aeroplanes and golf, and he observed that when the flying machines came they would be such boons and blessings to the golfing fraternity above all others as n.o.body imagined at the present time. He opined that no sooner did the flying machine become workable and reliable than every golfer who considered himself at all thorough, and took any proper care of his game, would think it his bounden duty to possess one. It would be as necessary to the playing of his true game as the nails in the soles of his boots and shoes, and he would be just as seriously handicapped without the one as the other.

This was a startling proposition; but though it was a great exaggeration of an idea, the idea itself was sound, and was based on the wisest and most generally-accepted philosophy. It was submitted that the aeroplane would be very good for golf, inasmuch as it would do less towards putting a man off his game at the beginning of the day than any other form of locomotion from his place of residence to the golf course.

It is a disturbing reflection that practically everything that one does in these days that is not golf tends to injure one's golf. Nothing has ever been discovered that with any consistency and regularity will improve it, except golf; the effect is always adverse, and perhaps this trying jealousy of the game adds something to its general fascination.

Usually a more or less lengthy journey has to be made from the golfer's home to the first tee, and it is this which is so much calculated to disturb his playing temperament. No matter how you make this journey it must be bad for your game, and the only difference between one way and another is in the degree of badness.

When a man has risen from his bed in the morning, thoroughly roused himself, and noticed that it is a fine day, he is at his best for golfing. After that all things put him off. Some authorities are very adverse to the cold bath, and others have even said that one's breakfast ought not to be regarded as an absolutely loyal friend. But it is the journey to the links--with all its delays, irritations, inconveniences, and joltings--that does the most damage. Frequently this journey is a mixture of cabs, omnibuses, and trains. At one point or another you have very likely to run for either the omnibus or the train, and this is certain to do something towards putting you off. It may be only a little, but it is this trifle added to other similar trifles that make up a total sufficient to bring disaster to your driving and putting. If you do not need to run anywhere, you have to wait, and this irritates and does harm. Then the great vibration of the cab and the omnibus most seriously affect the nervous system.

The golfer may not be conscious of it, but the effect is there. How true this is may be judged by taking the extreme case of the motor-bicycle. A year or two ago large numbers of golfers who could not afford motor-cars went in for the cheaper kind of machine, but to a man they found them quite fatal to golf, and particularly to their putting, the vibration having reduced their nerves to such a state that delicacy of touch on the putting green was next to impossible. Ordinary bicycles are nearly as bad. In many respects motor-cars have great advantages, and have become very popular with golfers, but they are far from being the ideal form of locomotion. Here, again, there is vibration, and if you have anything in the nature of a fright on the road you may generally reckon that your game for the day is damaged to the extent of a number of strokes that varies with the individual. Having all these things and many more in mind, the superiority of the aeroplane, from the golfer's point of view, becomes evident. It will take you from your door to the first tee, and, as there are no roads to jolt upon, one conceives that in the perfect aeroplane there will be no vibration, and, barring the effects of his breakfast, the golfer will be transported to the links in as nearly as possible the ideal state in which he rose from his bed.

XIII

Some footpaths count for very much in the playing of a hole, and at times call for and produce fine shots that would never be made if there were no path there. So sometimes they are good to the game; but generally they are merely an aggravation. You could hardly call a path or a road famous, but if you were asked which were the most notable you would probably call to mind first of all the path that goes across the first and eighteenth holes at St. Andrews, which is distinguished from others because of the devil-may-care spirit in which the general public defy injury and death by the way they saunter along it when such men as Edward Blackwell are standing on the first tee, and it is also a path among paths, because it has led to the cultivation of the most magnificent voice ever heard on any golf course. The man who has not heard Starter Greig fire his blast of warning through the hole in his box down the fairway--with a clap, and a bang against the horizon, for all the world like a discharge from a small bra.s.s gun--is still ignorant of one of the minor wonders of the golf world, and has a very inadequate perception of the possibilities of calling "Fore!" Likewise, one would say that of all roads--as superior to mere paths--that which skirts the seventeenth green on the same old course is the most remembered by the majority of good golfers--remembered sadly. How many golfers have had their brightest hopes dashed by that road when within sight of home and victory it would be a sorry task to count, but there lingers in my mind a dreadful scene when J. H. Taylor's ball went there in the course of the 1905 champions.h.i.+p meeting, from a not by any means unworthy shot, and of his trying, time after time, to get it back to the green, until when he had done so his nerves were tingling as would have been those of any man.

The paths and roads of Blackheath are altogether probably responsible for the making of a bigger and more enduring piece of golfing history than any others. Other footways may have despoiled great players of deserved honours, but thus their effects are chiefly destructive, and it cannot be claimed for them that they have made anything for the game.

But the Blackheath paths and roads have been constructive in their effect upon the game, for they made the bra.s.sey. There is a fair consensus of opinion that this most necessary of modern clubs was first introduced on this course as a consequence of these paths and roads that had to be played from, and also partly on account of the gritty nature of the turf. In those days of the use of the bra.s.sey, when a Blackheath golfer appeared on a Scottish course, the caddies knew his headquarters at once. "He comes frae Blackheath," they would say with some deprecation. "There's naething but gravel pits and stones at Blackheath."

XIV

However humble its merits may be, it is well that a man should be faithful always to his mother course, respectful of her, and that he should not speak and very tardily admit to himself the blemishes of her features. For it is always for him to remember that she, and she alone, gave the game to him that has yielded him so much happiness, and he owes to her a debt that he can never repay, save in constancy and grat.i.tude.

Therefore it is to be reckoned as a good thing in a golfer that, wherever the necessities and vicissitudes of life may take him to live, and for whatever other courses he may in mature years find a fondness and become attached to by members.h.i.+p, he should, if he can do it, always remain an a.s.sociate of his first club, and should from time to time display some public attachment to its course, even though it be at some inconvenience to himself. It is a little act of filial homage that should not be neglected.

At such times he will be kind to her and will not chide her for her weaknesses. He will humour her good-naturedly. The sixteenth may be a better hole on another course, but do not say so now. Think how rich did that sixteenth here seem in those far-off days when the teething to the clubs was first being done. What terrors had its bunkers! What a big, l.u.s.ty, and not to say a brutal one, did it seem then; but now to the time-worn golfer, if the truth must be whispered for once to himself, that old sixteenth seems something of a milksop, and can be played in ten different ways with a half-hearted drive and something of a mas.h.i.+e or iron. How happy we were despite the constant troubles in those olden days, when we were always with our mother links, and knew no others! The old men of golf came and told us of the great courses that they had encountered in their travels--such wonderful holes, such amazing bunkers, such marvellous putting greens! These travellers' tales were pleasant to listen to, and they fired the imagination; but after all we returned with some content to our mother links.

And then, what golfer does not remember the day, particularly if he was then no longer a child in years, when he went away for the first time from that course and paid a visit to one of those celebrated of which so much is written in the books and on which so many fine matches and champions.h.i.+ps are played? This is always an epoch, and a stirring one in every golfing life. There are many wild emotions in the man when for the first time he takes his club to play a shot on this foreign course of so much renown. If he is an intelligent man, and an impartial one, he sees the merit and the glory, and he admits it without reservation. He feels that now he has gone out into the great world, and that there are more wonders in it than even his utmost fancy had suspected. He is like the Queen of Sheba who went to see the magnificence of Solomon, confessing then that it was a true report that she had heard in her own land, though she believed not until her eyes had seen, when she knew that the half had not been told her. Out alone on this wonderful course the feeling of loneliness and helplessness will come upon this immature player. Truly the half had not been told to him, and in mortal agony in some "h.e.l.l" or other, or in a Devil's Kitchen or a Punchbowl, or it may be in the sandy wastes of a Sahara or in a creva.s.se on the heights of the Alps or the Himalayas--how, then, will he be reminded of the tender indulgences of his mother links, of her constant kindness, and of the way in which she humoured his youthful caprice and smiled patiently upon him when he was fretful! Perhaps she was too indulgent, and the maternal laxness did something towards the spoiling of the child for the manhood that was to follow. But no matter, let the golfer always be kind and well disposed to his mother links.

THE SUNNY SEASON

I

One hears it said sometimes by versatile and thorough-going sportsmen, that of all the sweet sensations to be discovered and enjoyed occasionally in the whole world of sport, the hitting of a perfect tee shot is one of the best, one of the only two or three best. These men are probably right, for the hitting of a really spanking ball from the tee, when one feels the complete absence of a grating or a jerking anywhere in the system, showing that the whole of the most complicated movement has worked round the centre with the accuracy of a watch, and that every ounce of available power has thus been put into the drive to the greatest advantage--this is a fine thing to feel, and the pity is that the joy of it is so fleeting, and that the memory of it has entirely gone a few minutes later when some succeeding shot has not been quite so good.

But is there not another feeling which comes to a man in the game sometimes which is even more uplifting, much more so? It lasts longer, and it is fuller, richer. The man is then transformed, etherealised; he is no longer a thing of this crawling, walking world; and he is not a mere man on the links as he used to be, happy, indeed, for the most part, but very human, with many adversities to encounter, as generally in this world. The man is raised for a while to the higher state, and his golfing soul floats in Valhalla when he is suddenly permitted to play many holes in succession better than he had ever played holes before--everything perfect, and a little more than perfect, which means fortunate all the way from the tee to the flag. It is one of those days which have been dreamt about and regarded as impossible, when the marvellous coincidence has occurred of the man being "on" everything at the same time, and of everything going right when he was thus on them.

Aforetime it has been that when he was on six things a seventh has led him astray, and there has always been a seventh at least, if not another too. The factor of evil could never be cancelled. But this time it is, and it is as if the G.o.ds, smiling benevolently on the lucky and successful player, determine that he shall be happy to the utmost, and therefore they allow him all the good fortune that is theirs to give.

The most perfect b.a.l.l.s are driven from the tee, the most impossible carries are accomplished; there is a delightful crispness about the approaches, and the six-feet putts are holed with precision and confidence; while here and there, to the utter demoralisation of the arch enemy par, to say nothing of the poor man who is the human victim of it all, the long putts go down as well.

It is, perhaps, given to most players to be stirred with this indescribable joy once or twice in their lives--seldom more than that.

It is not until three or four holes have been played that the full realisation of what is happening comes to the favoured player, and it is then that he is rapidly etherealised. His joy may last for another four or five holes; it will seldom endure a round. I have seen men when they have been in this state and under this most extraordinary influence, and they have not then been as they are at other times. Their inward ecstasy s.h.i.+nes outside them. There is a curious nervous smile on their faces, and their eyes gleam. Their steps are short and hurried. They seldom speak, and when they do there is a touch of incoherency in their remarks. It is best that they should not be spoken to. They are suffering from a curious dementia of exaltation. They have help from Olympus, and history is being made. When I have seen it done I have once or twice made a close study of the behaviour of the man, and I know that it is as I have written. One of the most memorable occasions on which I witnessed this super-exaltation was during an Open Champions.h.i.+p at Sandwich, when records were being made, and when at last a fine amateur player seemed to set out towards the making of one more. Hole after hole was played with that combination of perfection and fortune, and at last the man fell under the influence, and you could see it in possession of him as he went tripping along. You knew that, phlegmatic as a golfer must be who aspires to the greatest achievements, and as this one often was even in the hour of crisis, his heart was now beginning to beat.

Soon afterwards it was all over; there was an amazing catastrophe on a fiery putting green and four or five putts were needed there. Three years later I saw the same man with the exaltation in him again at Muirfield, when he went through to a great achievement. I shall not forget the look of that man when he was doing these things. It is a chilly descent when the spell is broken, and it is all earth and clay again, but in the reaction there is no suffering. A happy reason comes to the rescue of the throbbing player, and he is reminded that such things are not to be for always, lest golf should not be what it is.

II

When the sun s.h.i.+nes the putting greens get keen. There is an old saying that driving is an art, iron play a science, and putting is the devil.

Just that--the devil. I agree entirely, and I have ascertained that the greatest exponents of the game are in sympathy with the suggestion.

Well may the writers of text-books of the game declare, when they come to the chapter on putting, that there is really nothing to say, and that they must leave the reader to find out the whole business by instinct and practice, as there are no rules to be laid down for his guidance.

What would be the use of their pretending that they can really teach putting when, if they had to hole an eight-feet putt for a champions.h.i.+p, the odds would be slightly against them? In June 1905, while I was smoking my pipe on the top of the bank on the far side of the home green at St. Andrews, I was being provided at intervals of no great length with much food for reflection and philosophy, better than which no man who ever talks or writes of golf could wish for. The Open Champions.h.i.+p was being played for, and there duly came along Vardon, Braid, Taylor, and Herd, all more or less favourites for the event in progress, and it is a real fact that of these four men three of them missed putts at this home hole of less than a yard. I think the average length was about eighteen inches; one of them was not more than a foot, and the way in which the ball was worked round to the far side of the hole without going in was wonderful--quite wonderful. It will be noticed that I give four names and mention only three misses. This is because even the greatest players are sometimes very tender on this subject of missing short putts, and to spare them any annoyance I do not name the particular individuals who failed. It is enough that one of them, and one only, did not.

The history of every man's golf is covered with metaphorical gravestones as the result of all the short putts he has missed. Every season the whole course, and the result of almost every event of importance, would be changed if one or other of the parties did not miss some of these apparently unmissable putts. One need go no farther back than last year's Amateur Champions.h.i.+p meeting. I saw Mr. John Graham miss a two-feet putt in his match with Mr. Robb on the fourteenth green. This was the all-important match of the whole tournament, and in the light of what happened afterwards it was made to appear that the missing of this putt cost Mr. Graham the best chance he ever had in his hard and deserving golfing lifetime of winning the blue ribbon of the game.

Mr. Robb himself fancied that Mr. Robert Andrew would be the ultimate winner of the champions.h.i.+p that time at Hoylake, but on the eighteenth green in one of his rounds Mr. Andrew missed a putt of less than a foot for the match, and then had to go on to the nineteenth hole, where he was a well-beaten man. And in the final tie of all, if Mr. Lingen had never missed a short putt, who knows but what he would have been the champion of the year after all?

Therefore we may take it as established that the very greatest players cannot do the very shortest putts with anything approaching to certainty, when it is of the very greatest importance that they should do so. They are no better at this game than quite moderate players, and the chances of their holing such putts decrease according to the importance of the occasion--that is to say, the more necessary it is to hole the putt in order to promote one's success in the encounter in progress, the less likely is one to do so. This is one of the fundamental principles of the thing. Anybody can hole a putt of four or five feet when it doesn't matter, and when there is no particular credit in doing it. It is when it does matter that you cannot do it. The hole is 4 in. wide, and the ball is about 1 in. in diameter. You may use anything from an umbrella to a lawn-roller in order to putt that little ball into that huge pit, and yet at that distance of three or four feet you cannot do it--that is, as often as you ought to do. Training and practice are no use. Do not beginners always do these putts well? That is because they do not know how difficult they are. They will by and by, and then they will begin to miss them! At home I have a little baby girl, and sometimes she gets one of my putters out of the corner, and begs for the loan of a ball. Make a sort of hole on the carpet, or even go out on to the lawn and play at a real hole in the real way, and that little thing will hole the putts of a yard and two yards every time! She never bothers about any particular stance or anything of that kind, and takes no count of the blades of gra.s.s or where she ought to be looking at the much-talked-of "moment of impact." She just putts, and down goes the ball every time! It is wonderful, one of the most wonderful things in sport that I have ever seen! Here she does that, and we others who know so much about these things, cannot do them--at least, not with the same certainty.

Here is another point. It may need only an exceedingly delicate stroke to putt a ball properly, yet if you take the clumsiest, h.o.r.n.i.e.s.t-handed labouring man--say a road-mender or a railway navvy, who had never either seen or heard of golf before--he would never miss those three to five feet putts. Again it is because he does not know how really difficult they are. It is said that a mighty hunter of great renown, a man who had bagged all the big game of India in great variety, once declared in an agony, "I have encountered all the manifold perils of the jungle, I have tracked the huge elephant to his retreat, and I have stood eye to eye with the man-eating tiger." All of which was quite true--he had. Then he added, "And never once have I trembled until I came to a short putt."

I have thought the matter out, and I suggest the reason. It is one of the prettiest points in psychology that one will encounter in the whole of a long lifetime of the most careful thought and study. You don't really want any mind at all for putting purposes. The whole thing is too simple, and instead of a mind and brains being any use for the purpose in hand, they are a positive disadvantage, and are continually getting in the way.

III

Consciousness is often fatal in putting, and it is the conscience making a coward of the man that makes him miss his putt. To hole a three-feet putt over a flat piece of green is really one of the easiest things in the world; there can be no doubt about it. But while there is one ridiculously easy way of doing the putt, there are about a dozen more or less difficult ways of missing it, and these dozen are uppermost in the mind of the golfer when he comes to his effort. Thus the missing of the short putt represents the greatest triumph of matter over mind that is to be found in the whole range of sport, or, so far as I know, in any other pursuit in life. But why should a man be given to these morbid thoughts of the ways of missing, and why should he not be of hopeful, courageous disposition, and attack the hole boldly and with confidence, instead of remembering these dozen ways of missing? That is what non-golfers ask.

It is an easy question to set; but there is another factor in the situation that has to be mentioned. There is the sense of responsibility, and this sense of responsibility is probably greater in a man when he is making a putt of from three to five feet than it is in the case of any other man at any time in any other sport, because he will never, never have the chance again that he has got this time. If he putts and misses, the deed is irrevocable, the stroke and the hole or the half have been lost, and nothing that can happen afterwards can remove the loss. If a man makes a bad drive, or if his approach play is weak, he can atone for these faults by being unusually clever with the subsequent stroke in the play to the hole, and he thinks he will. But the short putt is the very last stroke in that play, and if it is missed there is no possible atonement to be made. Thus there is something of the awful, of the eternal, of the infinite about the putt; the man is awe-stricken; he knows it is easy, but he is conscious of those dozen ways of missing. So he misses. I have put the question to a number of the best-known players of the day as to what were their precise thoughts--if any--when they came to making the final putt of a great match, which in many cases gave them a champions.h.i.+p. Their answer almost universally was that their thought was, "What a fool I shall look if I miss this putt!" Thus they knew that they ought not to miss it, but they were burning with consciousness of the fact that they were terribly liable to do so. So matter triumphs over mind.

IV

Can anything in a mechanical sort of way be done to overcome this awful difficulty? I fear not, though one or two new putters are invented every week, and some of them are acclaimed as being the philosopher's stone for which we have been looking. The golf world began to buzz as if its mainspring had got loose when Mr. Travis won the champions.h.i.+p at Sandwich with that Schenectady putter--the most epoch-making putter of all. But where is it now? Very few people use it.

Putters have been made of every conceivable shape and of every possible material. Counting all variations, there are thousands of kinds of putters. They have been made with the heads bent back, forwards, and sideways. Some of them have had very thin blades, and others have had thick slabs instead of blades. They have been fas.h.i.+oned like knives, hammers, spades, croquet mallets, spoons, and riddles, and some even like putters; and they have been made of iron, gun-metal, steel, aluminium, nickel, silver, bra.s.s, wood, bone, and gla.s.s. I have here beside me a putter made in nickel, and consisting of a large roller, running on ball bearings! It is no good. The simplest are the best. We cannot obtain will-power by machinery or mechanical appliances.

Mr. James Robb tells me that the putter he always uses is an ordinary cleek which he got when a boy. His sister won it in a penny raffle, and having no use for it herself she gave it to him, and he has putted with it ever since. Three times has he putted his way to the final of the champions.h.i.+p, and once has he won it. Again, Mr. J. E. Laidlay conveys the information to me that when he was a boy at Loretto School he came by the first golf clubs he ever had in his life in his second or third term, these being a cleek and a bra.s.sey. That cleek-head has been his putter ever since, and it is getting so light with wear that his friends are beginning to tell him that it will soon do for him to shave with.

Harry Vardon won his first champions.h.i.+p with a putter which was not a putter at all, but a little cleek that he had picked up only the day before in Ben Sayers' shop at North Berwick. He fancied it as a putter, and he has never putted better than on that day at Muirfield. He has never used it since, and now he has taken to the aluminium putter. And do you know that just before the famous champions.h.i.+p at Sandwich, Mr. Travis was using a putting cleek that he, too, had got at North Berwick, and it was his intention to putt with it in the tournament? But he was not putting very well in practice at St. Andrews, and one of his compatriots then introduced to him for the first time in his life the Schenectady, which, after one successful trial, was forthwith commissioned for Sandwich. What a subject for a great historical painting to be hung up in the Temple of Golf that we shall have some day--"Emmett introducing the Schenectady to Travis, 1904." I think it was Emmett; if it wasn't, then it was Byers. Anyhow, golf history was changed in consequence of that introduction, for I am sure that Mr. Travis would not have won at Sandwich with his North Berwick putting cleek. It wasn't the Schenectady that did it, but it was the player's then confidence in the Schenectady. He had, for the time being, got that little devil of golf in chains, and putting had become a great joy.

V

Golf is a jealous sport, and often takes it ill when any of its patrons devote their attention occasionally to other diversions of the open air, and exacts from them such a penalty in failures and aggravation when they come back to their true love as is calculated to make them hesitate before committing further offences. Perhaps it is natural in a way that golf, which has so much of wild nature about it, should be least inclined to brook the rivalry of games of the namby-pamby order. Fine field sports such as shooting and fis.h.i.+ng do not put you off your golf, in fact we have generally concluded that a few days' fis.h.i.+ng sandwiched in a golfing holiday rather does good to your game. Perhaps it stimulates your thinking qualities, and if you are not reflecting upon the other and the better way in which you might have played the seventeenth hole the day before, when you should be noticing the significant manuvres of something in the water, all is well. But a game that golf cannot and will not tolerate acquaintances.h.i.+p with upon any consideration, is croquet. The royal and ancient one has decided apparently that it will not recognise it in any way whatever, and that it will give a bad time to any golfer who potters about on a lawn with hoops and bells and wooden sledgehammers. And it does so. There is no more sure way of disturbing your putting than an hour or two's croquet.

This putting poison is most deadly efficacious, and its effects sometimes last for a couple of days. The man has not yet been born who can putt well after a game of croquet. Croquet is really putting, but putting with a big heavy ball after the style of a cannon ball, and it has to be putted on a woolly green of rough gra.s.s in which a golf ball would do something towards burying itself. Your accommodating eye and touch soon become accustomed to the big ball and the mallet, and you begin to putt through the hoops exceeding well, feeling then that you hold an advantage over others through usually having to manage a smaller ball under more difficult circ.u.mstances. But the awkward part of the business is that the eye and touch won't go back again so readily to their golfing adjustment, and while they are out of it some funny things are likely to happen. At such times the golf ball looks impossibly small, and, while one is overcome with the idea that it will need remarkably delicate management, one finds it impossible to wield the putter as it should be. Here is the story of a recent happening:

A and B are keen rivals on the links--so keen that there is always great haggling when it comes to adjusting the odds for a match, B usually giving A three strokes. On the present occasion A informed B that he would be glad to play him a match on the afternoon of the following day.

B wanted to know why they could not make a full day of it and play in the morning as well, but A pleaded that he had to take part in a tom-fool croquet match to which he was committed at the house where he was staying. They settled the terms of the next afternoon's encounter at the same time, and B said that as A would be playing croquet in the morning he would be willing to give him five strokes. This was really foolish of him; but no matter. A thought something, but said nothing.

The golf match was duly played on the following day, and, to the mortification of B, the croquetter putted like an angel the whole way round, won his match by 6 and 5, won the bye, and, holing a ten-yarder to wind up with, took the bye-bye as well. B was naturally in a most unhappy state of mind, and moaned that he had never before known a man to be able to putt after playing croquet, and that it was because of this that he had given A two extra strokes on that dismal day. "Croquet!