A line o' gowf or two

HAD HERRICK GOLFED.

Why do British golfers, in their photographs, always look as if they were four down at the turn, and American golfers as if they were six up?

THAT WE SHAN’T MAKE A 73.

Sir: I absolutely refuse to putt for a hole if a ball which has already been holed is not removed. What is your pet golfing superstition?

H. F.

Pursuing a red ball over the wintry lea is a pastime that leaves us cold. But, for compensation, one does not hear, in the locker room, that the shower is “the best part of the game.”

“Golf,” writes Professor William Lyon Phelps in “The New Republic,” “has done more for swearing than any other modern employment; it has made taciturn gentlemen as efficient as teamsters. The disappointments of golf are so immediate, so unexpected, so overwhelming. Nearly all men, and women, too, must swear naturally in their thoughts; else how explain such easily acquired efficiency!”

Professor Phelps’ observations coincide with ours. Once, having addressed the recreant ball in terms more pointed than polite, we remarked to the caddy: “The ladies never talk that way, do they?” “Oh,” said he, “they say worse things than that.” Which moved us to inquire: Should a youth of tender years caddy for a lady?

“Golf is the peculiar pastime of a peculiar people”; and particularly peculiar are the persons into whose soul the iron has entered and displaced the wood. A friend of ours, Colonel Talmadge, of Glen View, is one of these eccentrics. He was starting out for a round one day, toting a ton of iron, when his partner inquired: “Where are you going with all those dental instruments?”

The news that a golf pro in Louisiana was buried with his favorite clubs set us wondering what might be the width of the River Styx. While waiting for the ferry the shade might tee up a few balls and see whether he could carry the hazard.

“Golfing Wonder—One-Legged Man’s Win in Open Tournament.”—London Mail.

He couldn’t kick, eh?

The grounds and greens committee of the Evanston Golf Club concludes: “Transgressions of the rules embodied in paragraphs 1 to 14 shall be reported at once to the rules and etiquette committee.” But why, a member wants to know, send the fourteen points abroad again?

FOR GOLF BUGS ONLY.

In 1909, P. A. Vaile, the w. k. golf nut, discoursed in “Modern Golf” on the superior merits of the open stance. The model he selected for his illustrations, George Duncan, was shown hewing to that stance, let the chip shots fall where they might. However, a little study convinced us, then learning the game, that, while the open stance might be all right for Duncan, it was all wrong for us; whereupon we adopted the square stance, and, like the person in the soap ad, we have “used no other since.”

Now hearken to George Duncan, writing in 1920: “Generally speaking,” says he, “I should say that the best stance is the square one. I found it to be the best, but, before I made the discovery, I went through a trying time in which I had many aggravating cutting of tee shots.... To many (I know it did to me) the open stance would appear to be the natural method of standing up to a golf ball. I can only repeat that if your trouble is slicing, you will continue to have plenty of it to face if you do not get to the square stance.”

Better late than never.

A good argument against the theory that man is descended from the monkey is the average golfer. Now, the monkey is nothing if not imitative, but a golfer can watch a professional swing all day without being able to imitate his motions. No swing could be more obvious than that of our canny friend, Joe MacMorran; he merely hauls off and hits the ball, which is all that is necessary. Josephus weighs, when he is eating well, 104 pounds, yet he knocks the ball half a mile, or thereabouts.

FOR GOLF NUTS ONLY.

Dear Beechnut: Why do I call you a beechnut? Because it’s the only nut older than a chestnut. What do you mean in 1920 by trying to hold me answerable for what George Duncan and I thought in 1909? On golf we are like Art J. Balfour in politics—of whom you may have heard, although you would not approve of his follow through. We have no settled convictions. We must expand with the exigencies of modern golfomania.

You know yourself, from personal experience, that the stance for the pull at the 19th hole has been recently changed to the open square, and even at that it requires a fine push to get a shot of any length or depth. When such a radical change as this takes place overnight you must not mind George Duncan changing his mind once in ten years—and I am not sure that I don’t agree with him.

P. A. Vaile.

THE NINETEENTH HOLE.

[From the Des Moines Register.]

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hole will entertain the Nonpareil Club Friday evening at their home, 1502 Twenty-fourth street.

Once in an aeon or two somebody says something about putting that is as a light in a dark place, as a staff to a blind man, as a voice crying in the wilderness. Thus spake George Zarathustra O’Neil:

“It will be objected that no putting green is as smooth as a billiard table, but such objectors will hardly maintain that the majority of putts that miss do so because they are thrown off the line by inequalities in the surface of the green. The fact is that most putts that miss were not played properly—and that is the whole truth.”

WHOLE DUTY OF CADDIES.

That, with acknowledgment to Stevenson’s heirs and assigns, covers the case to our notion. It may be desirable to give a caddie a polite education, including French and dancing, but the duty of a caddie is simple. So long as he is reticent and watches the ball, we don’t mind if he stands an inch too near us while we shoot, or whether he bats an eye while holding the flag for a putt.

Miami, with its 19-hole golf course, has a rival in Pensacola, which calls itself “The Oasis of West Florida.” One who was there tells us that it is well camouflaged.

We have read half a ton of golf books, and in none of them is it advised to start the hands back before the club head. Yet, as C. B. Lloyd’s moving pictures show, many if not most of the crack players employ that method. Don’t they know what they do?

“Lord Northcliffe is shown contemplating a long drive on the celebrated golf course at Biarritz, where he is much at home.”—The incomparable Examiner.

As the gentleman has a mashie in his hands, he is evidently a considerable contemplater.

“Warren K. Wood and Will Diddel, paired against Chick Evans and Kenneth Edwards.”

“With the upright swing,” writes Hon. Jock Hutchison, “you must of necessity take some turf. Any novice knows when he has taken too much.” True; the limit is a pound. But what the novice needs to know is that it is more important to put back turf than to take it.

Speaking of the Lincoln Park Country Club, F. D. P. reports that the golfer in the skin-tight, bowery blue sweater failed to make a clean drive although he spat on both hands.

A carping correspondent asks why cartoonists, column conductors, and so forth, drop into golf when they can’t think of anything else to draw or write about. We can reply only for this department. We touch the subject of golf infrequently, and then chiefly for the benefit of readers in remote corners of the land, who write to us to ask about such elementary things as the difference between square and open stance. These novices are almost sure to get off on the wrong foot if they read almost any of the books about golf. Herr Einstein’s explanation of his theory is translucent compared with the average golf writer’s exposition of his stroke.

The results are sometimes deplorable. There is Ed Freschl, who wrote the other day that golf does not reduce his circumference. Very likely not—with his swing. He probably entertains that curious notion of the “follow-through” which the writers emphasize—the notion of “letting the arms go forward freely,” as if that would get you anything. Ed will never take up any belt-holes by extending his arms in prayer.

Brother Whigham takes a lusty crack at some of the “enormities” of golf, No. 2 being “the horrible habit of counting scores and competing for silver pots on Saturday afternoons.” Medal scores produce the “strong east winds in the locker room” which George Ade once referred to, and are a nuisance in more ways than one. Some pencil players remain on the putting green, lost in computation, and it is necessary to drive into them to wake ’em up.

The links of the Gary Country Club are laid out on the Atlas plan, reports the Gary Tribune. “That is, squares each 100 feet in size, measure numerically one way and alphabetically the other. This greatly facilitates the locating of any particular section of the grounds when necessary.” The idea being, we take it, that when a player slices into the ball he has only to consult his atlas to locate the ball.

Much personal property was destroyed in the fire at the Glen View Country Club; but they saved the trophies! What’s the use of having a fire if you don’t get rid of the trophies?

“THE ART OF GOLF.”

Readers and writers of the game are discovering Sir Walter Simpson, whose “Art of Golf” is a classic not so much because of the instruction it contains as because of the graceful style in which the instruction is conveyed. In this respect it resembles “The Compleat Angler.” Old Izaak’s instruction to fishermen was sound enough, but we cherish his pages for something more than that. Sir Walter wrote the book himself, we conjecture—another peculiarity distinguishing it from most of the dull-thud volumes on the Five-Foot Shelf of Golf Books. Copies of it appear to be scarce; a gentleman writes to “The American Golfer” that he has a Simpson in his library, which “makes at least two copies in America.” We’ll make it three; there is a copy in the Chicago Public Library. And we shall be much surprised if Mr. Dana, the golfing librarian of Newark, N. J., hasn’t Simpson in his temple of erudition.

SUPREME IGNORANCE.

Sir: The scene is a picnic in the middle of the fairway of Hole 1. Question, by a judge of the Supreme Court: “What do they use this part of the golf grounds for?”

J. P. M.

Cornell, Ia.

A player on a public course in Chicago broke a leg during his upswing at Tee No. 1. Very likely he is, or was, a disciple of that school of thought which insists on having the right leg as rigid as the well known ramrod. Soon or late one of these stiff-legged players was bound to unscrew or fracture the limb. For this school the wooden leg is the ideal pivot.

“GOLIF.”

“Much virtue in If,” as the Bard of Avon (sometimes referred to as Shakespeare) remarked. “If I hadn’t looked up—” “If I hadn’t tried to kill the ball—” “If I hadn’t sliced—” “If I hadn’t turned my body too soon—” In view of these and other Ifs, lame and impotent explanations (commonly known as alibis), the World’s Greatest Obsession might appropriately be spelled “Golif.”

An account of an aviation stunt on Chesapeake’s strand includes the instructive information that the aviator “began his loops with graceful curves, accurately timed.” Our first thought was that all curves are graceful, but the Short Skirt has negatived that notion; and some of the most ungraceful golf swings we have observed undeniably described curves. The intriguing item in the aviation story was the accuracy of the timing. If we only knew how a sky terrier times his curves we might be able to explain how Mr. Ouimet or Mr. Evans times his’n.

“All Mrs. Gourlay Dunn-Webb’s male ancestors for generations, including her father and mother, have been golf experts and teachers.”

Does this prove, queries J. U. H., that golf un-sexes one?

THE GOLFING DOCTOR.

A lady in Lake Forest, Ill., whose cottage is within a few yards of the tenth hole at Onwentsia, tells us that there are no good players in the club. It seems that the members of foursomes gather at this tee to make up their matches for the day, and the lady in the cottage has overheard so much self-depreciation, she has come to the natural conclusion that every player in the club ought to be started at least six up.

Whenever we play at Onwentsia we think of an odd happening at the first tee a few years ago. A waiting foursome of plutocrats were discussing a Certain Rich Man. “Oh, he’s not so well off,” remarked one; “his income can’t be more than $250,000 a year.” At that moment a visiting golfer from the Skokie club, who was in the act of swinging, topped his drive and fell into a swoon.

It is an old saying that too much abuse of a man will enlist sympathy for him. So with the stymie. Many players who considered it merely a necessary nuisance are beginning to feel that they can’t keep house without it.

IN THE LATE BILL NYE’S BAILIWICK.

Sir: Can you inform me where one might procure a good golf hound? The animal chosen must have a sense of smell that will not be deflected by the dust and gnats in the buffalo grass, a sense of sight that is unerring, and the courage and agility to retrieve balls which have rolled down gopher holes. Ours is a nine-hole course. The first hazard consists of discarded objects of various sorts forming what might be called the city dump. The other hazards are prairie-dog villages and the tribe of gopher. To keep thoughtless cattle from making their beds on our greens we have the latter enclosed with barbed wire. But even here the game flourishes.

Josh B. P.

Laramie, Wyo.

When we added a wing to our Cannery last Spring, we reserved a shelf for golf phrases that exhibit signs of decomposition. The canning season is now here, and Jar No. 1 has been set on the shelf, bearing the label, “A close student of the game.”

SOUNDS SARCASTICAL.

Sir: I read: “Kenneth Edwards by his play to-day demonstrated that he is possessed of the courage of a lion.” In the face of these noble sentiments concerning two adulated young men propelling a harmless sphere across the virgin sward, how puerile appear Hercules’ twelve labors, Napoleon’s conquests, and Cato’s success in learning Greek at eighty!

J. F. B.

Golf is becoming a democratic game—who can doubt it? Private and public links multiply. And yet—and yet—when a national tournament is on nobody calls up a newspaper office to inquire about the score.

A pedometer test shows that a housewife walks two miles while preparing three meals, but father walks twice as far doing a round of golf and doesn’t make any fuss about it.

We were admiring the niblick of Chick (“Charles”) Evans. The next morning he sent us one just like it. Quite Japanese—the courtesy, not the niblick. But in Japan you are supposed to return the gift, are you not? How about it, “Charles”?

WE, TOO, PASS.

Relying on our superior wisdom, Mr. George O’Neil has relayed to us the following problem from a Kentucky gentleman:

“Dear Sir: I have played golf six years. I play an average game but my iron work has been awful. Lately a friend suggested pronating the left hand (turning it over) just as you start the back-swing, and I must say it worked wonders. I tried the same theory with wooden clubs and the same was disastrous. Why should this work on one and not the other? What really happens when you pronate? Why should a player have to use this method for results?”

We supposed the relative merits of the flat swing and the upright swing had been definitely defined. At least we recall a learned scientific exposition in “Golf Illustrated” some months ago. “Of course,” we remarked to Hon. Bob MacDonald, the lank pro at Indian Hill, “of course you swing upright, whereas we ought to swing flat.” “A flat swing,” replied Hon. Bob, “is no good to anybody.”

SCIENCE IN THE WOODS.

In summer journeys through the woods we have admired (as what forest pilgrim has not) the ax work of our guides; and there is little to choose between the best white artist and the best Indian. Bill was perhaps our favorite, and it was always a pleasure to watch him work—especially if the day was warm. His execution was precise, no matter how precarious the stance—as, for example, when he placed one foot on the bow of the canoe and the other on a floating log, and tackled the river barricade which the Chippewa calls “ge-bok-wah.” Bill grasped his ax with the o. f. palm grip. We tried to induce him to use the Vardon grip, explaining that the two hands would function more nearly like one, but Bill couldn’t see it; nor could we make him visualize the motion of the ax as a sweep, rather than a hit. We had better luck when we got on the subject of the left being the master hand. Bill agreed to give that the once over. He did, and nearly cut his feet off. After that we could do nothing with him.

“AM I TO SET MY LIFE UPON A THROW?”

Omar Khayyam, the well-known wine agent, related musically that when young he eagerly frequented the company of the well informed, and listened to cubic miles of heated air; and that, so far as unravelling the plot of the universe was concerned, he might as profitably have spent his time in digging holes in the desert. And so it is that while we hear “great argument” about the golf swing, it remains to the majority (and we fear it must continue to remain) a royal and ancient arcanum.

Take some recent punditial ponderings put forth by men who, as Editor Behr has said, can never be satisfied with their perceptions until they have translated them into thought. A writer in “The American Golfer” illumines the arcanum with this lightning flash:

It seemeth to us that any one who tries for a final effort when the clubhead is two feet from the ball is endeavoring to encompass the improbable, and is getting away as far as possible from the idea of “throwing the head of the club at the ball,” as advocated by leading academicians. We asked Mr. George O’Neil to explain the throw, and he replied that “the clubhead must lead in the movement, and pull after it the shaft of the club and the player’s hands, arms, and body.” This dictum may, to some mentalities, be packed with significance, but it means little in our mental life. A throw’s a throw. We, too, essay a throw, but we throw what is in our hands to throw, which is the other end of the club. What becomes of the head of it we do not know, but we are sustained and soothed by the unfaltering trust that if it continues attached to the shaft it will take care of itself.

After all, the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is more fancied than real. Both of these heroes drive a long ball. It is only when they attempt to translate their perceptions into thought that they slice to the rough.

Our gossip, C. B. Lloyd, who has taken miles of moving pictures of the golf swing, writes us that, in the case of many celebrated players, the pictures show that the clubhead does not leave the ball before the hands and arms are set in motion. That coincides with our observation, C. B., and applies particularly, we conjecture, to upright swings.

A THING OF BEAUTY.

(To Old E. C., Donor.)

“CONSULT HARRY VARDON.”

Dear Mr. Vardon: We cannot supply a photograph of our chief golfing fault, but perhaps we can make it clear to you. Our great trouble is splitting our psyche; we seem not to be able to give an undivided soul to the ball. Just as we are ready to shoot, something of less importance—immortality, the war, or the cost of living—comes to mind, and the result, as often as not, is a top. Any little suggestion will be appreciated by your constant reader and admirer.

Among those recently bitten by the golf bug is Old Bill Byrne, and he is making, as he was bound to make, interesting discoveries. “A man isn’t a good player,” sezzee, “until he can make his drive sound like the wind storm in ‘Way Down East.’”

Golf is being made safe for democracy, as items like the following indicate:

ON THE LINKS OF THE GARFIELD TOWN AND COUNTRY CLUB.

Sir: Last Sunday our Beau Brummel appeared in the latest golfing costume, cutaway, striped trousers and straw hat. And he played.

M. A. C.

Evans, Edwards, Hutchison, and MacDonald are to play over George Ade’s golf course, for the Red Cross; and it may encourage these excellent players to learn that Messrs. Ade, McCutcheon, Atkinson, and Ye Ed all pitched to the flag on the short hole one day. There was, unfortunately, no gallery.

When we wrote: “None of the golfers were wearing derby hats,” we knew we should start someone. “None are” is good English, and once out of perhaps fifty times we prefer it to “None is.”

FOGGY.

“The ball is played well back off the right toe,”—the St. Andrews run-up is under discussion,—“and the hands are held well in front. This naturally tips the face of the mashie forward, reducing the loft.” Is there any other reason for holding the hands forward except to reduce the loft? If not, why not use midiron or cleek? There is, of course, a reason, but it is not mentioned. We can account for the perfect opacity of golf writers only on the classic theory that language was invented to conceal thought.

Steel shafts are mentioned, since hickory is temporarily scarce; and steel shafts will do as well as wood or concrete for the dub, just as a steel fish rod serves the ignoble purpose of the impaler of worms.

Readers who attach significance to what is termed the fitness of things will be enthralled to learn that Charles E. Ball has been re-elected president of the Tampa Golf Club.

A standard of amateurism is needed in art, says Max Eastman. “We cherish that standard in sport, where it does very little good and quite an amount of harm. It is idealism of a kind, but it is misplaced idealism.” We must agree with Max; indeed, any man whose first name is Max is more than likely to be right. There is Max Beerbohm for one, and Max—— But we digress, as Ulysses remarked when his ship was blown nine points to leeward. What we started to say was, there are two kinds of golfers—gentlemen and gents. The former might be admitted to national tournaments, the latter barred. You know the golfing gent. He has spoiled more than one afternoon for you.

LIFE’S LITTLE MIDIRONIES.

To aim at the southern hemisphere of the ball, and then hit it above the equator.