THE LADY GOLFER.
The Oklahoma Times refers editorially to the Nineteenth Amendment. The editor, it is conjectured, is probably a golfer, and has confused the amendment with the hole.
Society over here doesn’t make much of golf. For one thing, all sorts of people play it; then there isn’t much chance to exhibit millinery, while to watch a match one has to walk three or four miles. It is easier to pretend an interest in tennis.
Golf seems a great waste of time, until you see a man shooting at clay pigeons or starting off to attend an automobile race.
We believe we have discovered a method of hitting a golf ball with certainty and precision, and we pass it on to the great army of toppers. You know what you do; you step up to the ball apprehensively and hit it timidly and ineffectively. Then, when it hop-skips into the rough you waste all manner of epithets on it. The language is all right, but it is applied at the wrong time.
Try this; tee the ball, stand over it threateningly, and glare at it balefully. As you swing back, say, between shut teeth, “You pock-marked”—the adjective brings you to the top of the swing, when you pause an instant to gather all your energy. Then apply the noun—any you may fancy—at the same time smiting the ball as if it were the head of a rattler.
The secret of the method is a maximum of concentration. Your malignant gaze has never left the ball. It is surprising the distance you get—if you don’t smash your club. Even that’s better than topping.
THE COMPULSION OF HABIT.
Sir: Gentleman with two golf clubs in his hand stepped into an elevator in the Railroad Exchange. After the car started up he yelled “Four!” The man standing in front of him ducked his head.
E. F. W.
Meditating on the fact that the English have beaten the Scotch at their own game of golf, a correspondent writes, “Is there, in the whole history of games, another case like this?” Sure. There’s polo. It originated in Asia.
We do not wish to add to the already extensive list of words and phrases used in writing of golf, but it occurs to us that “led the field” would be a serviceable phrase in reporting a qualifying round.
Suggestion to crack golfers: Why not get photographed in the act of finishing a drive?
“Keep your eye on the ball,” writes Arthur Taylor, the w. k. golfer. And he adds, quizzically; “Which eye?” It makes a difference.
Speaking of golf (which we do on the slightest encouragement) the Pall Mall Gazette has been considering the best hole in a choice of 50,000. The experts do not agree, naturally, but they do agree that the best “blind hole” is the Alps hole at Prestwich.
At a meeting of 10,000 Chicago golfers, it was agreed that the most attractive hole was the nineteenth.
In his preface to his book, “The New Golf,” P. A. Vaile writes: “Unless one can play, or at least talk intelligently about golf, one has to miss about three-quarters of the conversation in any country club—and many other places in America.” That were indeed a deprivation.
As for the instruction in the book; the essence of it is that one should grip the club tightly and think of nothing except hitting the ball. Sound advice; there is no better. It is almost impossible to explain the golf stroke because of its simplicity. One might write a book explaining how to swim, but if the novice persisted in throwing up his hands he would go under. Similarly, if the golf novice persists in attacking the ball in a complex and unnatural manner, elaborate treatises on the simplicity of golf will do him no good.
A large part of Mr. Vaile’s book is taken up in pooh-poohing the theories of other writers, which are for the most part pooh-poohable. The question arises, what would Mr. Vaile and the others do for material if the game were not enveloped in mystery, and the simplest club shot considered as solemnly as the ordination of a bishop?
A golf bag that does not require a caddy is among the season’s novelties. It is, we assume, so contrived that every now and then it slams itself on the ground with sufficient force to break the shaft of the driver or brassie.
A popular fallacy, usually cherished by the missus, is that a man can get as much physical good from weeding a garden as from playing eighteen holes of golf.
From Milwaukee comes the regret that we have deserted the r. and a. game for a mere automobile. We found that hauling on a wheel ruined the delicacy of our approaching game.
Nineteenth Hole has a yarn to tell. His opponent drove a ball under a low-limbed thorn apple, and as he crawled into the thicket on his tum, N. H. said j. l. t. “Keep your head down!”
There is nothing surprising in the news that a caddy found a diamond necklace on the links. A caddy is likely to find anything except the thing you pay him to keep an eye on.
A GREAT GAME.
Sir: A tall youth who golfs (by courtesy) at Jaxon park has a wig-wag and swing which suggests a combination of St. Vitus, tango, and locomotor ataxia. As he was teeing off with much ceremony the other day a Scotch devotee of the game remarked: “’Tis a great game! There’s a mon who gets a’ there is in it. Before he heets the ba’ he’s used every mooscle in his body except his ears.”
R. H. C.
“Near Golf Links”—Ad of a South Haven resort. Obviously, again, a hyphen is missing.
“Play golf on perfect links”—Railroad ad. There ain’t no sich thing.
It is never too late to learn. From their more recent disquisitions we observe that professional golfers are learning something about the game, and are advocating methods precisely the reverse of their former instruction.
ADDRESSING THE BALL.
“The revolutionists hold much of southern Finland along the Finnish golf,” reports the Minneapolis Journal. And A. E. B. thinks it must be annoying to have those seaside links cluttered up with Bullsheviki, Red Guards, and other things.
The difference between a summer member and a regular member of a golf club is that the summer member does not enjoy the privilege of paying dues during the winter.
GOLF ATHLETES.
Sir: As a fellow sport will you kindly assist me to hand a few remarks to those people who speak of golfers as “athletes.” Athlete is an over-worked word, anyhow, and to tack golfers on to its tail, is about the limit. To my notion golf is a game fit only for ladies and doddering old men. You are at liberty to give my address to any golf “athlete” who thinks he would like to “take a fall” out of me.—Buck (Ex-champion tiddlediwinks athlete.)
One or two professionals have admitted that when you look at the hole in putting the ball keeps wonderfully on the line, but they think they sense the distance better by looking at the ball.
FOOTNOTES TO BAEDEKER.
At Kingston, Sept. 2, 1912.
Between the fort and the town sprawls the links of the Barifield Golf Club, as “sporty” a course as you please. I remarked a clubhouse and a number of putting greens; for the rest one plays anywhere across the rock-strewn landscape. Wire fences surround the putting greens, on which the grass is tall and thick. A herd of cows were cropping the fairgreens and these I took to be members of the Greens Committee. Although it was Saturday afternoon, only two players were on the links, and they, as long as they remained in view, were searching for balls among the myriad stones of the hillside.
At Manchester, Vermont, we were the honored guests of Dr. P. Sibleius Ferus, the distinguished Latin scholar and gentleman. An evening’s conversation with Dr. Ferus is as stimulating as I conceive an evening with Dr. Middleton to have been. I also shot a round of golf with the doctor on the links of the Ekwanok Club—the most beautiful course I ever expect to see. The score? No matter.
It was a new experience to play golf among the mountains. It is a passionate golfer who can disregard the distracting views from the tees and regard the ball as raptly as certain Hindu gentlemen contemplate their equators. Upon the flat and smoky links on the south side of Chicago concentration is easy. The ball is the handsomest object in sight. There, too, it seems a more important matter than among the mountains. Of course one may look at it this way: A golf ball is a symbol of infinity; it is as perfect a sphere as Aldebaran; the power that sends it winging is one with the power that moves the stars in their courses; the laws that govern its flight and trajectory are as immutable as the laws that bind Arcturus and his sons. The trouble is, if you get to thinking in that groove while addressing the ball you are apt to laugh, and that spoils your drive.
Chicago golfers who may have played around the links of the Claremont Country Club of Oakland, will agree that the course may be classified as “sporty” especially in August. The earth is baked hard and the turf burnt brown, and the ball, however driven, runs like a kangaroo. If the drive deviates from the straight and narrow path the ball rolls down hill to heaven and the caddy knows where. One usually aims ten or more points to the right or left of the flag; and so many shots must be played off steep slopes that a man with one leg six inches shorter than the other would have a decided advantage over the conventionally legged player.
A writer in Drover’s Journal remarks that we are “trying to tell Jerry Travers how to play golf.” The gentleman is wrong, as usual; we should assume to teach a duck how to swim. But putting is a department of golf in which one man’s opinion is as good as another’s.
A child cannot drive a ball 250 yards, but a child can putt better than a number of gentlemen we know who have been playing golf for years—provided the child is permitted to function naturally, as when it plays croquet.
When a seasoned player, distant only a dozen feet from the cup, can putt a ball a yard to the right or left of the hole, it shows that something is practically wrong. Yet one sees such pathetic exhibitions of inaptitude on every green.
SPEAKING OF PUTTING.
“Putts and calls are the safest and surest method of trading in wheat, corn or oats, because your loss is absolutely limited to the amount bought.”—Ad.
Keep your eye on the pit!
In Golf Illustrated, Mr. Francis Ouimet writes that when, in his approach putt, he runs by the cup only eight feet, he is more confident of holing the next putt than if the approach had been three or four feet short? When a man overruns the cup eight feet, would you call that sensing the distance?
THE SEVENTEENTH OF MARCH.
Sir: Apropos of the day, likewise apropos of one of your hobbies, it might interest you to know that golf as a game is of Irish origin, having been played by Cuchullian, a personality who figures largely in Irish heroic literature. In fact, it is said that the snakes left Ireland because of an unsuccessful attempt of a kind old mother snake to hatch a consignment of golf balls which she mistook for eggs. Whereupon she rallied all her ilk and they betook themselves to a land more suitable for incubating purposes.
T. O’D.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HOLE!
Sir: If I fail to hold my place on the team this year, it will be because your eye-on-the-hole stuff has made a good putterer out of a mediocre putter, and the crime will rest upon your colyum.
Farthest North.
Stick to it, old man, and you’ll come out all right. Two eminent psychologists have assured us that our theory is absolutely sound, and we’d rather have their opinion than that of Harry Vardon, who confesses that he doesn’t know anything about putting.
HAPPY HINTS FOR GLOOMY GOLFERS.
A large percentage of golf gloom arises from slicing. A golfer’s idea of hell is to stand on a hot tee for a million years and slice balls out of bounds. The chronic slicer is a wretched figure and he falls as low as he can when, giving up hope of ever hitting a straight ball, he aims a quarter of a mile to the left of the flag.
There are at least seven causes of slicing. The commonest is the vicious practice of bringing the clubhead down outside the line of the ball’s flight. This imparts a rotary motion to the ball, and the flight of it describes a crescent. You do this nine times out of ten. But do not despair; we can help you. We can teach you to hit inside the line.
Buy from a commission merchant a basket of very, very bad eggs, and give these to the caddy to carry. When you tee your ball, or come up to it on the fairgreen, place an egg about three inches away from the ball and an inch or so back of it. Now swing, being careful to keep the clubhead from straying beyond the line, otherwise you will smash the egg and scatter the malodorous contents. Before a dozen eggs are broken you will quit slicing or be asked to resign from the club.
If the egg remedy fails, procure a piece of dynamite and use that instead. This will effect a permanent cure.
L. E. B. says his wife claims to be a Class A-plus golf widow. When she passes to her reward she hopes it will be early in the week, so the incident will not interfere with husband’s Sunday golf.
Florence quotes from one of H. G. Wells’s slams at golf, concluding with, “The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf.”
“I play a beastly game,” adds Florence; “how about you?” Oh, a regular Chippendale of a game, my dear.
Sir: I am sure I saw her on the golf course one windy day. We offer her the privilege of our course for entire season if she will agree to keep herself in shape.
Chairman Entertainment Committee.
The consensus of our readers seems to be that the maiden whose legs are “noticeably bowed” should take up golf, as she would likely develop a peach of a game.
Sir: Sunday I looked at the hole and missed the putt. At the nineteenth hole I looked at the ball four times and was then eighty cents in the hole.
C. S. P.
ASIDES.
Davy: A light golf ball (floater) will rise fifteen or twenty feet higher than a heavy ball. A light ball should always be used when you have to “hold the green.”
L. V. B. Your experience coincides with that of many people. Putting cannot be taught; not because it is too hard, but because it is too easy. It is like instructing a duck in the art of natation.
After a round of golf a man might acquire a reputation for originality by announcing, in the locker room, that “at this time of year the shower bath is the best part of the game.”
“I must have looked up,” said our friend, A. E. D., as he replaced a divot. And he added: “Why don’t we have a list of such remarks, numbered to save time?” “Why not, indeed?” said we, who are nothing if not helpful. And so we offer a short list which golfers may extend as they wish:
1. “I must have looked up.”
2. “I tried to knock the cover off.”
3. “I should have used an iron.”
4. Omitted to avoid confusion with “Fore!”
5. “High like a house.”
6. “Some drive, that!”
With such a list agreed on, when a man topped his driver he would merely ejaculate, “Two!” and sit down.
All true golfers believe in a golf hereafter. Brand Whitlock was okaying St. Andrews with a famous “pro” who remarked, of a certain putting green, that there was none larger or finer, and Whitlock’s aged caddy added: “Not in this world.”
One of the pleasures of playing golf at Old Elm is a notable absence of small bets in the matches such as a ball a hole or a piffling “syndicate.” Old Elm golfers play for blank cheques.
A gentleman writes us that our look-at-the-hole theory works all right in practice, but breaks down in actual play. We beg to assure him that that is his fault not the theory’s. The test of every stroke is what you do with it in practice, when the muscles are relaxed and you function almost mechanically.
Frexample, the Worthington Ball Company does not employ a crack golfer to test its products; it has a mechanical driver at its plant in Ohio. If the ball flies straight they know it is perfectly round; if one brand flies farther than another, they know that that is the longest ball. There is nothing “psychological” about it.
FAR FROM THE M. C.
As bearing on the great obsession we may note that of the twelve volumes added to the library of the Union League Club of Chicago, “since the last report,” eight were about golf.
Casually glancing at a ladies’ tournament, we observed that while the follow-through of the players was open to criticism, the show-through was perfect.
When a lady golfer cries “Fore!” the safe thing to do is to step between her and the flag and call, “Shoot!”
An English writer having asserted that golf is a nerve-wrecking game, the Interstate Medical Record welcomes discussion of the subject, as a change from the eternal debate on sex and neurasthenia. Now, for several years, we have made a rather close study of golf and golfers, and we are well assured that golf as a health-giving recreation is a greatly overlauded institution.
We will consider, now, only the person with a nervous temperament: for him, golf is decidedly not a restful game. The failure to bring off a shot that he knows perfectly well how to play, due to the refusal of the muscles to obey the instructions of the mind, sets up an irritation conscious or subconscious, that more than offsets the good derived from a round on the links.
If golf works this way on a man who knows why he bungles a stroke, imagine what it does to the man who can’t tell what ails him, and must make periodic visits to the golf doctors to have his affliction diagnosed.
The best thing about golf is that it cultivates patience and perseverance. But so does the telephone.
WE SYMPATHIZE AND UNDERSTAND.
Sir: I feel that I have an indisputable right to wail at your wailing place. I am being ridiculed and relentlessly persecuted by various amateur golfer friends because, forsooth, I have dared to defend your theory of k. y. e. o. t. h.
Please assure me of at least your sympathy and understanding.
R. E. P.
P. S. I do not golf.
Much may be made of a golfer if he be caught young. After he has played a few years, you can’t tell him anything.
Speaking of “golf and athletic sports” a dispatch from New York mentions “precious stones and jewels.”
THE TRAINING OF CADDIES.
Sir: Didn’t that English writer who implied that we were committing an economical sin by training caddies to become a class worthless except as boys of burden, exaggerate things somewhat? Frinstance! At Jackson Park one day a caddie made a perfectly good nurse girl while the father and mother of the child played eighteen holes of golf. I can vouch for this, as I was nearby when the brave bag-bearer decided that pushing a baby buggy was not beneath his dignity.
R. H. C.
A sure-fire recipe for cooling off:
- Eighteen holes of golf.
- One long cold shower.
- One long cold ginger ale (flavored).
Jackson Park society note: Applications for lockers at the Golf shelter clubhouse should be made to-day—Mr. Jim McGinnis will assist in receiving the guests, and the weather man has promised to pour.
Query by the Golfer’s Magazine. “Does golf cause men to neglect their wives?”
Not being a golfiac, we cannot say, but if the answer is in the affirmative, the wives must be singularly unattractive.
Is there another bore comparable with the man who is just learning golf? He bores the friend who was so foolish as to show him the game. He bores the good souls who are kind enough to play around with him. He bores his family and all his acquaintances. And finally (if able to view himself objectively) he bores himself.
If we had not made a vow never again to parody “The Ancient Mariner” we might easily turn one on the golfiac who holds you with his glittering eye. But it would be a shame to do it.
“When you have practised with your mashie on the various golf courses around Chicago,” writes L. T., “and have hit a foot behind the ball and splashed mud all over you and into your mouth, have you ever decided which are the best tasting links?” Well, we fancy the Skokie pot bunkers, though the Glen View links are uncommonly rich. We usually eat with a niblick.
It may not be possible to write an interesting baseball story in ordinary English but it is possible in the case of Golf. The articles by Mr. Darwin in the W. G. N. are uncommonly interesting. He was not long in discovering that American players are weak with their irons, as any one with half an eye can see. This weakness is due to over swinging and to lack of instruction. Visit any golf club and watch the members play. Men who have played for years are content to dub around in ninety something. It is pathetic. The self-taught golfer moves us to tears.
Golf in itself is not an important thing, but if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. It is worth doing gracefully, too, unless nature has denied a man all sense of rhythm, which seldom happens.
UPLIFTING THE CADDIE.
Gratifying is the response to the inquiry, “What should be done to occupy, instruct, or amuse the caddie during the long waits?”
Sir: What shall be done is asked, to occupy, amuse or instruct the caddie during the long waits? Why, teach them to caddie, of course! One of ’em, at the Homeward links, planted himself at the side of each green, and whistled “On the Mississippi” while we were trying to putt. Obviously, it can’t be done—to that tune!
F. D.
F. W. P. “During those long waits, sift the caddie for golf balls. I think I know where you can get a new one if you hurry.”
C. P. S. “I always improve the time by reading to my caddies from ‘How to Keep Well.’”
E. McC. “Started by handing him the W. G. N. folded so the Line alone was visible. He calmly informed me that he read it every morning before eating, and after breakfast he looked at Brigg’s picture and read the baseball news. Then with a sly look, he remarked: ‘I ain’t seen you make it yet.’ Now, you got me into this, and it is up to you to reinstate me in the good opinion of my caddie—if he ever had a good one.”
E. E. R. “Uplifting one to-day, I found him standing on my perfectly good Black Circle.”
J. M. W. “Since school began, a small boy who hitherto had been a ‘model of a pupil,’ has been brought before the principal three times for using ‘the most terrible language.’ Questioned as to how he had spent his vacation, the miscreant confessed that he had caddied on a local golf course. The principal suggests that caddies be supplied with earmuffs, to be worn through the long and profane waits.”
Another way to uplift the caddie is to follow the example of Col. MacDonald of Edgewater and blow the boys to a good feed and a little good will.
JUST AS YOU SAY.
Sir: Asked my caddie his views, and he suggested shorter hours and higher pay. I guess it is about time to drop the subject.
A. McC.