Fifty Years of Golf Part 7

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Frank Kinloch, as gallant a golfer of his cla.s.s as ever held a club, has died since this was written.]

CHAPTER XXII

THE FIRST AMATEUR WIN OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONs.h.i.+P

In 1889, having, as aforesaid, exhibited to the Meadowbrook Club, on Long Island, a specimen of what they were good enough to say "might be a very good game for Sundays," I returned to Great Britain a brief while before the amateur champions.h.i.+p and went up to St. Andrews, very short of practice, to take part in it. The second or third round brought me up against Johnny Ball, and I put up a very poor fight against him. He was playing respectably enough--not more, for he never has been a real lover of St. Andrews--but I know that he had some satisfaction in thus getting back on me a bit of what was his due. I know that he had a little of this feeling because Johnny Laidlay told me that Hilton said to him, as we started off, "If there is one man that Johnny Ball would like to beat in the amateur champions.h.i.+p, it's Horace Hutchinson." So he had his wish, by some four or five holes, and it was at this same champions.h.i.+p, I think, that we first began to have an idea how sore a trouble Hilton was going to be to us in the years to come. For he was playing Johnny Laidlay, who was then at just about the best of his game--which is saying much--and he stuck to Johnny like a man, though he was hardly more than a boy, and Johnny confessed to me afterwards that he acquired a great respect for Hilton's play from that time forward.

Now the outstanding feature of that meeting was, beyond all possible question, the match between the two Johnnies, Laidlay and Ball. It was not the final match, but probably it decided the final result. They halved the round. Then, setting forth for extra holes, they halved the first of these--and not too creditably, if the truth be told, for I think the figure was five apiece. But the second hole they both played like tigers. They had two good tee shots, Johnny Laidlay's being a yard or two the longer. So Johnny Ball had to play. He took his cleek. Now to reach that second hole in those days, when the ground was not so keen and it was a gutty ball that had to be dealt with, with an iron club, at all was no easy matter; but Johnny's shot looked a beauty. I judged it, as it ran over the gradients, after pitching, to be as near perfection as a shot could be, and to be resting very near the hole. Johnny Laidlay then had to play; he, too, took a cleek; he, too, played a shot as near perfect, as it seemed to me, as might be. My only doubt was whether it was quite strong enough, whether it would quite hold its way over the undulations, whether it might not possibly die away, even towards the bunkers on the left, a little short of the green. I was, as events proved, wrong in my estimate of both shots. Johnny Laidlay's had just the strength to take the undulations at the right curve: it lay on the green quite near the hole. Johnny Ball's had been a shade too strong: it had even over-run the green and was in the bunker, just beyond. Of course that was the end. No doubt it was a most unlucky shot; no doubt it was a shot that deserved to win, rather than lose, a champions.h.i.+p.

But I do not mean, saying this, to imply that there was any luck in Johnny Laidlay's winning that match and that champions.h.i.+p. His shot was perfection. But Johnny Ball's was very perfect too. It must have been given an unduly running fall. However, such is golf, and such is life.

Then Johnny Laidlay had to play Leslie Balfour in the final, and beat him, as he really was likely to do, if both played their game. Gallant player as Leslie was, Johnny had all the advantage of the years on his side. Yet the time was to come, and many years later, when Leslie actually should win the champions.h.i.+p, beating Johnny in the final, and in a very wonderful manner, as shall be told in its due place in the story.

Now all this while I have said mighty little about the open champions.h.i.+p, because really the golfing world in general took little interest enough in it at that time. It was regarded as virtually an affair of the professionals. Now and then a few of us amateurs took part in it, but it was with scarcely an idea of possible success. And then, all at once, something happened, in 1890, which put the open champions.h.i.+p within the possible grasp of the amateur, and therewith the general interest in that great compet.i.tion became at once very much more vivid.

Johnny Ball had won the amateur champions.h.i.+p that year at Hoylake, defeating Johnny Laidlay in the final. My own part in the contest was an ignominious one, for I allowed myself to be defeated rather weakly by Johnny Laidlay at the last hole after being one up with two to play. I missed a short putt at the last hole, of which the memory is still painful.

I was playing fairly well that year, notwithstanding, and went to Prestwick for the open champions.h.i.+p--began by missing a very holable putt at the first hole and continued in a like vein throughout the two rounds. So that was the end of me. And then I, having finished my futile efforts, heard that Johnny Ball, who was still out, was doing terrible things. I went out to meet him, and as he reeled off hole after hole in the right figure it became apparent that "bar accidents" he was going to do the most terrible thing that had ever yet been done in golf--he, as an amateur, was going to win the open champions.h.i.+p. Dr. Purves was hurrying along at my elbow as we went, with the gallery, towards the sixteenth hole. "Horace," he said to me, in a voice of much solemnity, "this is a great day for golf." It was.

Johnny was playing with w.i.l.l.y Campbell, poor w.i.l.l.y Campbell, splendid player, most gallant of match-fighters, certainly deserving of champions.h.i.+p honours and only missing them on the last occasion of the champions.h.i.+p being played at Prestwick by one of those fatal accidents, very near home, bar which, as aforesaid, Johnny Ball was bound to win the champions.h.i.+p of 1890. But poor w.i.l.l.y on that occasion got heavily bunkered; lost his head a little and perhaps his temper more than a little. He had strokes to spare; but he wasted them hammering in that bunker, and when I came into Charlie Hunter's shop at Prestwick half an hour later I saw a sad sight. w.i.l.l.y Campbell was sitting on an upturned bucket on one side of the door, his caddie had a similar humble seat on the other side of the door, and both were weeping bitterly.

This, however, is a digression into a vale of tears. Johnny Ball did not digress into any such vale. He continued the scoring of the right figures and accomplished the great feat, for an amateur, of winning the open champions.h.i.+p. It was a win which made a difference. It seemed at once to bring the open champions.h.i.+p within the practical horizon of the amateur for all years to come. It had broken a spell. Incidentally it may be noted that it put Johnny Ball's name higher than any other's had ever been, for he held the champions.h.i.+p of the amateurs and of the professionals at the same time.

And what interested me much at the moment was the att.i.tude of the professionals towards the result. I had expected that they would feel rather injured by seeing the champions.h.i.+p which they had been used to regard as theirs going to an amateur. To my surprise that did not appear to disconcert them in the least. What they did resent, however, so far as resentment may be carried within the limits of perfectly good sportsmans.h.i.+p, was that it should be won by an Englishman. You see, it was not only the first time that it had ever been won by any other than a professional, but also the first time it ever had been won by any other than a Scot. That is a fact which will strike the reader with astonishment now perhaps, when the poor Scots must have become fairly well inured to Englishmen annexing the champions.h.i.+p. Taylor and Vardon, to say nothing of Harold Hilton, have taught them to grin and bear it as best they may. But up to that time a Scot had ever been open champion of the game of Scotland, and Scotland did not much like another taking it.

So that was "a great day for golf," as Dr. Purves had truly said to me.

It gave an added interest to all further compet.i.tions for this open champions.h.i.+p; for what an amateur had once done, it seemed as if an amateur might do again, and thus the active interest was no longer confined to the professionals. The amateurs became at once something more than mere lookers on. There was only one man who did not seem to realize that Johnny Ball had done a big thing, and that was Johnny Ball.

A week or so later he was playing a friendly match at Hoylake, and just as he was starting a stranger came up to him and said, "Can you please tell me, is the open champion playing here to-day?" and Johnny answered, "Yes, I believe he is." On which the stranger started out at score over the links in search of this "open champion," whom, presumably, he expected to recognize by some special halo set about his brow if he should come across him. Willie Park, fine all-round golfer and magnificent putter, was the previous holder of the champions.h.i.+p, which he had won in 1889 at Musselburgh; and that was the last occasion on which this open champions.h.i.+p ever was played on that excellent old nine-hole course. Just at this time the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers migrated down to Muirfield, and that green, instead of Musselburgh, became the third champions.h.i.+p arena, the other two, at that date, being St. Andrews and Prestwick.

CHAPTER XXIII

GOLF ON THE CONTINENT AND IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

In 1890 I took rooms in London, near a studio, and begun the serious study of anatomy and sculpture, with the idea of taking up sculpture as a profession. It was an idea which conflicted a good deal with the whole-souled devotion to golf. But following an attack of influenza, I went out to Biarritz in the winter and there found some of the most curious and amusing golf to be played that a man could meet with--up and down immense cliffs, in lies that were unspeakably bad, and yet, withal, the whole making, by some extraordinary means, not only an interesting species of golf, but also a species that has produced some fine players.

Ma.s.sy was then a boy there, going out in the sardine boats when he was not at golf, and thus gaining a perfect indifference to stormy weather which has been very valuable to him in his after life at golf. The storms on the Basque coast are not to be beaten: they are scratch, or even _plus_, as tempests.

Then Lord Kilmaine gave that Cup for foursome match compet.i.tion between Biarritz and Pau, which has been the occasion of grand fun every year since. We had a terrific match on the first occasion of its playing.

Eric Hambro and I--he was only a boy then, though a big one--played Johnny Low and poor Bobby Boreel, for Pau. We were any number of holes up--I forget how many, but the result looked a dead certainty--and then at one hole we put three shots running out of bounds. That was the beginning of our undoing. Hole after hole slipped away, and I know that it was only by a kindly dispensation of Providence that we even halved that match, which we had reckoned as safely in our pockets. And in playing off the tie, I think (I am not sure) that we were beaten.[6]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Chasm on the old Biarritz Course.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Arnaud Ma.s.sy.]

But the result of these matches mattered little. What did matter was the admirable fun we had out of them, the going and coming, to and from Pau and Biarritz, the entertaining, the mutual compliments, the eating and drinking. All the amenities of the match were so pleasant; for, with the foursome for the cup, was played, at the same time, a team match, of sides representing the two places. Some humorous incidents nearly always occurred to make us all happy. After I married, my wife, walking in the gallery, would often hear delightful comments on my play and other qualities, and one or two of the most pleasant of these were culled in these Pau and Biarritz matches. On one occasion I had Roller, the old Surrey cricketer, as my partner. He was not playing with very great confidence, and my wife overheard one man in the gallery say to another: "Old Roller seems a bit nervous, doesn't he?" To which the other replied, "Well, you'd be nervous, too, if you were playing with Horace Hutchinson." "Why?" asked the first man, innocently. "Because he's got such a devil of a temper" was the reply. That is the sort of comment which it is most unfortunate that a wife should overhear.

A failing common in our family is that of going white-haired at a comparatively early age. I began to put on that "crown of a virtuous life" when I was no more than sixteen. Partly on that account I have usually had the credit of being some years older than I am, and the golfing reporter, with the usual unconscious humour of his kind, began to write of me as "the veteran" at the age of thirty-five. One of the most constant habitues of Biarritz was the fine old sportsman Mr.

Corrance, in his day the best shot in Norfolk, and, besides, a fine fisherman, billiard player and expert at all sports and pastimes demanding quick harmony of hand and eye. In the course of one of these Pau and Biarritz matches, when I was playing for the seaside place and we were not going very strongly, Mr. Corrance found himself walking beside my wife. He knew her quite well, but for the moment had forgotten her name, and at once began to discuss with her the chances of the match. "The mistake is, you know," he said, "playing Horace Hutchinson.

He was a good player once, a very good player; but he's too old now"--I think I was thirty-eight at the time--"they ought to have put in a young man."

One of the attractions of returning year by year to Biarritz was to note the constantly increasing skill and power of Ma.s.sy. Just off the green at Biarritz the course was very loose and gritty. The accurate approach was most difficult to play. Ma.s.sy, of his own genius, had developed the playing of the stroke very perfectly, and very curiously. He used to swing the mas.h.i.+e very far back, in proportion to the distance that the ball had to go, and to let it come back to the ball very slowly, with very loose wrist. It is a stroke quite of his own invention, so far as I know, and I never saw anyone else play it quite in the same way nor as accurately. And out of the ranks of the Biarritz caddies came other good and great players, such as Ga.s.siat and that Dauge of whom Braid declares that he can drive a ball to carry as far as his (Braid's) ball will go with run and all. It seems a large order, but no doubt this Frenchman is a wonder.

On the way home from Biarritz we used sometimes to take a rest at other French golfing places, and most delightful was Dinard, where the course goes out beside a sparkling sea. It was good golf and beautiful. And on one occasion we took the Channel Islands on our way, and there my wife had yet another chance of hearing pleasant things said of me. Stuart Anderson was at Jersey. He was son of the English clergyman whom we have all known at North Berwick. A match was arranged--I think with some little money on it, though I had none--that I should play him thirty-six holes; and coming out in the train from St. Heliers to Gorey, where the links are, my wife heard some one say to another, discussing the match, "I hope Anderson beats that fellow Hutchinson; he swaggers so." However, on that occasion, I escaped the salutary chastis.e.m.e.nt. I played fairly steadily, and after a while Stuart Anderson broke up a little and let me win pretty easily. The course at Jersey is a worthy school for those great golfers, the Vardons, Ray and so on that it has sent out since; but at that time the one who gave most promise was Renouf. He was not more than a boy, but he was a demon putter.

I had for caddie at Jersey a very small and very stolid little boy. Most of the Jersey folk are bi-lingual, speaking English and French indifferently, but this little boy seemed to have no tongue at all; I could not get a word out of him. But towards the end of the round there is, or there was, a hole which was just to be reached by an extra long drive from the tee. I made a very fine drive to this green, and the ball, as we came up, proved to be stone dead, just six inches to the right of the hole. And then this astonis.h.i.+ng little boy did open his mouth, and, still with the solemnity of a cod-fish on his face, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed this comment on what was perhaps the very finest stroke I ever played in my life--"Too much to the roight!"

It was perfectly just criticism. The shot was "too much to the roight"--by six inches, at the end of a very long drive. Had it not been so, the ball would have been in the hole. I do not know to this day whether that little boy was a humourist of the very finest and dryest--really of the _extra sec_--quality, or whether he was just the very stupidest thing ever made in the Channel Islands.

From there we went to Guernsey, where the caddies were certainly anything but stupid. They were little girls, bare-legged and bare-headed, but wonderfully keen and wonderfully pious, for they would make the sign of the cross over the line of the opponent's putt to prevent the ball going into the hole. And really it is extraordinary how difficult it is to putt straight along a line that has been thus crossed. Guernsey has a course which is finer in some of its natural qualities than that of Jersey, yet it does not seem to have grown a single great golfer, whereas the Jersey soil seems to bring them up like weeds. It is rather curious. But the great days of the Jersey professors had not yet dawned. Harry Vardon was still working in a garden not far from the Gorey links, with dreams, perhaps, of future glory, but no present achievement. Ma.s.sy was picking the ball up with his marvellous nicety from the loose rubble of the stuff just off the Biarritz greens, but had not yet gone in the train of Sir Everard Hambro, my own most kindly host at Biarritz, to North Berwick. The Scottish golfers had received the first shock to their national pride, in seeing the open champions.h.i.+p of their own game won by an Englishman. It had not yet entered into their astonished heads that it was to be won by invaders from outside the British Islands.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: I have been since a.s.sured, by Eric (now Sir Eric) Hambro, that we won on the last green.--H.G.H.]

CHAPTER XXIV

ABOUT HAROLD HILTON, FREDDY TAIT AND OTHERS

What between trying to be sculptor and succeeding in getting married, I did not pay all the attention that I should have done to golf in the early nineties. Hilton was runner-up in the amateur champions.h.i.+p, first to Johnny Laidlay and then to Johnny Ball, in 1891 and 1892 respectively: so we may regard him as thoroughly well arrived. In 1893 Mr. Peter Anderson, at Prestwick, beat Johnny Laidlay in the final for the amateur champions.h.i.+p and so broke up our triumvirate. I was not there, and know nothing of the merits of that champion, who soon, on account of an unfortunate chest weakness, migrated to Australia. But the amateur champions.h.i.+p of 1892 deserves a special word, because it was played for the first time at Sandwich. It was a sign of the times, sign of a generous policy on part of the Scottish clubs, sign of an extension of the golfing spirit, that this South-country green was welcomed into the sacred number of those on which champions.h.i.+ps should be played.

In that same year, though I was not golfing very a.s.siduously, I was at North Berwick when the open champions.h.i.+p was played at Muirfield, and had a narrow escape of winning that open champions.h.i.+p. It was the first year that the compet.i.tion was extended to an affair of seventy-two holes, stretching over two days. Previously, two rounds, or thirty-six holes, had decided it, and at the end of the first two rounds I astonished myself and most other people by finding myself heading all the field. I forget by how many I had the advantage, but I think it was by two or three strokes. Then, on the morning of the second day, hitting off from that first tee at Muirfield, which then was not far out from the wall, I pulled my very first shot over the garden wall, and took I forget how many to the hole. But I remember intimately that this evil start had a baleful influence against which I struggled in vain; I went from bad to worse, and what my eventual score was for the seventy-two holes I do not know.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

J.E. Laidlay.

Horace G. Hutchinson.

John Ball, junr.

P.C. Anderson.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: H.H. Hilton.]

Really it was rather hard luck: if only they had deferred that extension of the test, from thirty-six to seventy-two holes, for one year more I might have written myself open champion, but it was not to be; and as it's an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good, so that extra day gave Hilton just the opportunity he wanted. I can see him now as he came up to the last hole--I had gone out to meet him hearing that he had been doing very well--walking along at top speed, chatting volubly with his friends, very pleased with himself, as he well might be, brimful of confidence and with the smoke trailing up from his cigarette, even while he was playing the ball, so that it seemed impossible that he could see through it to hit the ball correctly. But he did hit it mighty correctly, for all that, and won the champions.h.i.+p. I believe he did several conjuring tricks during the course of the round, such as holding mas.h.i.+e pitches from the edge of the green. But however he did it, he won, and therewith, from that time forward, established himself as very distinctly the best amateur score-player that we have ever seen. Of that there can be no question.

So far as I can make out I played very little golf in 1893. Probably I was amusing myself with being ill, in some form or other, but in 1894, I had golf and greatness thrust upon me by being elected captain of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. The local people showed me no little kindness, and made my year of office very pleasant. I stayed at the ever hospitable house of Alec Sinclair, most cheery of companions, just beside the links, and I see by the record that they were kind enough to let me win the first medal on the first day of the spring meeting and again the first medal on the first day of the autumn meeting. The following year I was not at the spring meeting, but at the autumn meeting I won the first medal on both days. The next year again I won the second medal on both days of the autumn meeting--rather a quaint record and one that I am proud of.

I am proud, because those Hoylake medals were not very easy to win. The local talent, with Johnny Ball and Hilton always on hand--Jack Graham was not yet a force to reckon with--was very formidable. But I remember that on one of these winning occasions I had a portentous piece of luck.