The Spirit of the Links

How much does it mean to us, does a year of golf! In the last few moments of the year that you give up to golfing thought and reverie as you sit by the cheerful fire, and perhaps, according to the old fancy, toy on the hearthrug for a while with the putter that you hold at convenience in the corner, and the memento ball that you preserve upon the mantelpiece—at such time make a pleasant reflection upon all the joy and the gladness, and the health and the adventure, and the glorious rivalry and close comradeship that have been crowded into this short space of time! Above all, think how much nearer in most blessed friendship has this year of golf drawn you to those who are most after your own heart! There is no habit of man that can do more than golf towards such an end as this, and it is in his abundance of the best friends that a man lives most happily and to the best purpose.

And the golfer has seen more of the year, of the real year of Nature so complex and so complete in its variety and balance, than the other men who live in towns. He braved it in the open lands through the bitter weeks of January and February, and he was cheerful through the winds and rains that followed, for as the rainbows spread across the sky he knew that the glorious spring had come, most heartening time of all the golfing year. Then would he stamp his feet on turf grown firm, and acclaim his ball with affection for its constant cleanliness. The golfer, even he of the town, hears the change in the song of the birds, he notices the newcomers among them; he has interest in the leafing of the trees, and lo! the big sun of summer shines upon him. And when can golfer be happier than when, after droning lazily through a hot afternoon, he plays an evening round upon the links in those most perfect conditions for pure delight? Surely it is hard to say which of those rounds is the best, that of the spring morning, the autumn morning, or the one in the balmy evening of June. And the golfer, bold and lucky, who once in a way makes his ripest play on some wild day in December when the wind from the sea comes like a blast across the links and all above is dripping scud, would in his pride not grant that the golfer lived his life at the full on any of those other days of peace and calm. So, from the play in the long summer twilight, we wander down the year, through brown October to the greys that follow, and the white curtain falls at last upon the exhausted season.

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