A first glance at the course assures us that we shall not be disappointed, for as we take our stand upon the tee we are ringed round with sandhills, and wherever the first hole may be, this much is evident, that we shall have to drive the ball over a mountain in order to get there. Hole succeeds hole, and still the endless range of hills goes on, and from the summit of each one we get the most lovely views: to the right a chain of hills, with the Cheddar Gorge in the distance; to the left the Bristol Channel, with the islands of Steep Home and Flat Home and an expanse of dim country on the other side. When we turn for home at the ninth, we still see the sandhills stretching tumultuously away towards Weston, with their strange fantastic shapes, and occasionally a narrow, meandering ribbon of turf in between. There seems to be material for at least one other course, and, indeed, the difficulty would appear to be not to find bunkers, but to find an open place where there are not too many of them.

With this wonderful stretch of country to work upon, it is small wonder that those who originally designed the course made a number of blind holes. They would have been hard put to it to do anything else, and there are, in fact, on the old course, if my reckoning be correct, no less than six blind one-shot holes, to say nothing of several longer holes, where the approach shot is played merely at a guide flag waving upon a hill top. I say the old course because, as I write, Burnham is in a transition stage, and what may be called the new course is practically in working order. Thus some of the blind short holes will disappear for ever, not, perhaps, without leaving a pang of regret behind them, and in their place come some flatter, and longer, and more open holes, which are not so characteristic of Burnham, but are none the worse for that. The hills will be all the more enjoyable when occasionally contrasted with the plains, and these new holes now give the course just that extra length that it needed.

Now let us play in imagination over the course in its altered condition, and tee up our ball for the first hole. There is a little dip between two grassy hills—a horribly narrow one it looks—and that is where we have to drive. A really fine shot may take us to the edge of the green, and we may go on our way rejoicing with a three, for the green is big and good. A drive and a pitch in the country of hills should suffice for the second, and then come two excellent holes, where we cease to drive over the hills, and are set the far severer task of hitting straight down the gully that lies between them.

“This reminds me very much of Wallasey,” I remarked, not without hopes of having made an interesting and original comment, and my guide answered in a tone, in which courtesy struggled with weariness, that he had often heard the same comment made before. Of these two holes the fourth, which is ‘dog-legged,’ and gives a well-deserved advantage to the fearless hitter, is particularly good; and then there comes a most fascinating hole, the fifth. Two full shots are needed, over some very broken and billowy country, to reach a green that lies at the bottom of a deep hollow. This hollow has merits, which are not given to all of its kind, for its sides are abruptly precipitous and not possessed of those gentle and flattering slopes, which coax the indifferently struck ball in the direction of the hole. The sixth, on the other hand, which is a one-shot hole, has all the vices which the fifth avoids, for here all roads lead to the flag, and the perfect shot, the paltry slice, and the too vigorous hook, may all meet together at such a range from the hole that a two is by no means improbable.

After being unduly pampered by this sixth hole, we are brought face to face with the sterner realities of life, and must be prepared to play a series of long and accurate brassey shots if we are to do anything better than five for each of the next three holes. Of these three the eighth and ninth are new, and the only thing to be said against them is that there is such a family likeness between them that it is a pity they come immediately together. Nothing but long, straight hitting will do here along a narrow tongue of grass that is flanked on either side by sand and bents.

The tenth deserves a special word, if only for the fact that a huge sandhill has had its head cut off—this is regarded as quite a minor operation at Burnham—in order that we may see the flag from the tee. There it is, a terribly long way off, as it seems, but one really good shot should reach the green, avoiding some little nests of pot-bunkers on the way, and there is a three to reduce the average of fives for the homeward journey. Another three should come at the twelfth, when only a short pitch is needed, but eleven and thirteen are very likely to be fives; long, narrow, flat holes, with broken ground and little clumps of rushes that are intensely business-like. The fourteenth is, I think, almost the best hole on the course, and certainly the tee-shot is the most alarming. We can see all our troubles only too clearly here—a sandy road full of the deepest ruts on the right, called in spirit of ostentatious levity the ‘Old Kent Road,’ and on the left a prickly and seductive hedge. If only there was a mountain in the way at this hole, we should probably come less frequently to grief. As it is, we concentrate all our attention on being straight, and are all the more terribly crooked in consequence.

The next two holes both need accurate approach shots, and then comes the last and best of the blind holes, ‘Majuba.’ There is a steep hill of a rather curious conical shape to drive over, but the chief of the dangers lie on the far side, where the green lies in a narrow little gorge between a bunker on the right, and on the left a hill thickly covered with bents. This is as good a blind short hole as one could possibly wish for, and makes a sufficiently critical and exciting seventeenth, while the new eighteenth should be one of the best last holes to be seen anywhere. Two raking shots will be wanted, and the second of them, if it go as straight as an arrow between two flanking bunkers, will be rewarded by as good a piece of turf as the heart of the putter can desire.

Still travelling back in an easterly direction, we come to Broadstone, in Dorsetshire, not far from Bournemouth. Broadstone is, I think, rather an easy course to remember, which is the same as saying that the holes have each got very definite characters of their own; at any rate, although I have seen them but once, I can play them all quite clearly in my mind’s eye, save only the park holes, which, truth to tell, are not much worth remembering. These park holes are certainly one of the drawbacks to the course. For six holes we are playing excellent golf in the right golfing country, with heather, and sand, and everything as it should be. Then we go through a wicket gate, the whole scene instantly changes, and, behold! we are playing a hole of the typical inland kind. There is no heather and no sand, save such as has been transplanted to fill up a number of conscientious little bunkers, and it is no great injustice to liken the turf to that of a good smooth field. For six holes we are playing in the park, and then the tyranny is overpast, and we emerge once more upon the heather for the rest of the round. In fact, the course is divided into three slices of six holes each, the first and last slice being good, and the middle slice being of very ordinary stuff indeed.

It is a little hard to understand why these park holes were ever made, because there is a glorious and apparently illimitable tract of heather waiting to be played over, only divided from the course by the railway. I believe there is a scheme afoot to make some further holes upon this heather, that is now so lamentably wasting its sweetness, and if this is done, Broadstone should be able to hold its head very high among inland courses.

In point of mere looks, it is very hard to beat now, and especially is there a most lovely view, with Poole Harbour in the distance, from the fifteenth hole, which is on the highest part of the course. This hole has likewise a unique feature in the shape of a genuine Roman tumulus, which at first sight the stranger is apt to attribute to the genius of Mr. Herbert Fowler, or some other maker of hazards. It stands almost exactly in the middle of the fairway, and those who drive too straight must deal with the situation as best they can with their niblicks.

A vast deal of trouble and money must have been spent on the putting greens, which are very smooth and good, and enormously big. They are, in fact, too big, and a revolutionary leader who should dig bunkers in the edge of them would be doing the course a service. I cannot help thinking, also, that rather too many of them are upon plateaus—not the plateaus of St. Andrews, but the plateau that is cut out of the side of a slope and has a back wall to cover a multitude of approaching sins. The bunkering is something of a patchwork, in which the theories of two opposite schools have been blended. We see, first of all, the remains of an older civilization in the shape of deep sandy trenches, with the accompanying ramparts dug right across the course. Then, as golfing opinion has progressed, or at any rate altered, there have been added, under Mr. Fowler’s guidance, a good number of pot-bunkers, which seem to have some of the qualities of those we know and fear at Walton Heath, being easy to get into and hard to get out of. Besides these, the heather is always there to trap us at the sides of the course; there are also trees in places, and likewise whins, while one of the park holes so far demeans itself as to be guarded by an ordinary hedge.

The course begins very well with a fine, long, two-shot hole, a little ‘dog-legged,’ where the second shot will just creep on to the green between two sentinel bunkers. The second is another fine one, save that the plateau green has a terribly steep bank; and the third is wholly admirable, with its cheerful tee-shot from a height, followed by an iron shot down the middle of an avenue of trees. The fourth I believe to be likewise an excellent hole, but my attention was distracted from the hole by the scene I witnessed on the tee. There was an irascible gentleman and a small caddie; the caddie had made an inefficient tee, and the irascible gentleman was the possessor of a prolonged and solemn waggle. The waggle began and the ball fell off; the irascible gentleman made opprobrious remarks, and put it on the tee again, while the small caddie showed a dreadful tendency to laugh, which he restrained with obvious difficulty. This happened really innumerable times, till both the gentleman and the small boy appeared certain, from different causes, to die of apoplexy, and, indeed, I had serious fears for myself. The ball was ultimately despatched into a neighbouring ditch, and I passed on without having disgraced myself, but remembering very little about the hole. Both the fifth and sixth are short holes, though the sixth needs a long, straight shot, and then we pass into the park, or better still, by a short cut along the high road, which brings us back to the heathery country and the thirteenth hole—a good short hole, where a wood to the right of the green has doubtless slain its tens of thousands.

At the fourteenth we need a long, straight drive, followed by an iron shot that must be played firmly and boldly home on to a plateau guarded in front by a steep and unclimbable bank, and to the right by a pit of destruction, where the horrors of sand and whins are intermingled. Of the remaining holes, the seventeenth and eighteenth are both good, especially the former, which, with its tee-shot among the whins, has an air of Huntercombe about it. The sixteenth, however, does not seem at all worthy of its fellows, being, as it appeared to me, as essentially vicious as a hole can be. The ball is struck—with a measure of straightness, I admit—to the brow of a hill, then the hill does the rest. The ball hops, and skips, and jumps down the slope till it reaches a green built out from the hillside, and, lest it should jump too far and run over, there is a back wall of wire-netting. This is the kind of hole—I can think of nothing worse to say of it—that some people call ‘sporting.’

Having given relief to my pent-up feelings on the subject of that sixteenth hole, I feel entirely at peace with Broadstone, which has some really fine holes, and is as pleasant a spot to play golf in—as breezy, and pretty, and quiet—as anyone could desire.

Besides Broadstone and the new course at Parkstone, which can be reached by a very short train journey, Bournemouth has two courses of its very own, Meyrick Park and Queen’s Park. Both are situated in very pretty spots, amid the fir trees that are always with us at Bournemouth. Meyrick Park is rather a miniature affair, although it is not so short as when Tom Dunn originally laid it out. Then there was one green that could be reached with a shortish putt from the tee, and the most decrepit might hope for a round under eighty. There are still many threes for the accurate iron player, but there are also one or two good long holes, particularly the ninth, where we play, as it were, into the narrow neck of a bottle among the pine-woods. It is not unamusing, but the serious golfer will rather betake himself to the newer course at the Boscombe end of the world, Queen’s Park. Both these courses belong to the Corporation, and all we have to do is to pay our shilling and play our round. We get plenty for our money at Queen’s Park, for the course is over 6000 yards in length, which is certainly not too short for the wants of old gentlemen who totter round it.

It is really good golfing country, with big, rolling undulations and plenty of heather and sand. There are long, narrow gullies running in between the hills, rather reminiscent of another very pretty course, Hindhead. For the most part, however, we are not playing along the gullies, which would have tested our accuracy to the full, but rather go leaping from one hillside to the other; in fact, if we are virtuous we are always on a hill, and the valleys represent the infernal regions—it is only the wicked who go down into them. This is just a little monotonous, and we might rashly call it a fault in architecture. There is, however, a reason for it, in that all the best soil is to be found in the highlands, while the low-lying ground is in that respect unsatisfactory.

The course is still comparatively young, and has not yet put forth any very thick crop of bunkers; but the heather is wiry and tenacious and the fairway narrow. There are two consecutive holes of a most paralyzing narrowness—the seventh and eighth—where the ball has to be steered between a fir wood on the right and a high road, which is out of bounds, on the left. The third hole, again, is a fine two-shot hole, and there are plenty more. They are perhaps rather too similar in character owing to the recurring valleys, but they one and all need good play.

Even among the heathery courses, which are nearly all good to look upon, Queen’s Park takes a very high place for beauty, and it is a joy to find anything so pretty and peaceful on the very edge of a big town. Every prospect pleases, and only the old colonel, who is in front of us and plays fifteen more with his niblick, is entirely vile.

The reader must now make in imagination the short and generally innocuous crossing to the Isle of Wight, in order to see one of the most charming of nine-hole courses at Bembridge. The Royal Isle of Wight Golf Club can boast of a comparatively hoary antiquity, since it was founded in 1882, and Bembridge was perhaps rather more famous when there were fewer links in existence. It is still, however, very good golf, and has many faithful and affectionate friends. The nine holes dodge in and out after the manner of a cat’s cradle, so that Bembridge has earned a reputation for being one of the most dangerous courses in the world, and it used to be said that all the local players expected to be hit once at least in the course of a year. To cry a brisk ‘fore’ is to absolve oneself from responsibility, and one may then let fly at any impeding player with a clear conscience. There is one particularly perilous spot, where the ball is apt to lie after a straight drive of moderate length on the way to the first hole. Here the player is in the midst of a veritable ring of death, since a hot fire may be opened upon him simultaneously from the seventh, eighth, and ninth tees, to say nothing of the first tee to his immediate rear. It is perhaps owing to this exciting characteristic of the course that that pleasant anachronism, the red coat, is still occasionally to be seen at Bembridge.

The course lies upon a spur of land between Bembridge harbour and the Solent, and one is rowed over to it from the hotel in a boat. Small things remain absurdly graven on the memory, and I remember nothing at Bembridge more clearly than the nautical gentleman who used to row us over a great many years ago, and his expression when Mr. John Low genially hailed him as “You licensed brigand.” Once the stranger arrives on the course he will be struck, possibly by a ball, and certainly by the ubiquitous character of a road which winds about the course like a snake, and is an almost ever-present menace throughout the round; indeed, it has some say in the matter at every one of the holes, save only the third and the fifth. Some of its glory—or its horror, according to the light in which we view the matter—has, however, departed, for whereas it was once uniformly sandy and soft and full of the direst ruts, it is now metalled in many places, and so is naturally much less terrible. Another feature of the course, which is now less pronounced than it used to be, is the luxuriant growth of whins. These have become sadly thinner, and one who knows and loves his Bembridge well tells me that this is in a measure due to the havoc wrought among them in the early days of the rubber-cored ball, when a Haskell was infinitely precious and was not to be given up for lost till the entire neighbourhood had been laid waste with the niblick.

The first hole is one of the best on the course, requiring a drive, followed by an accurate cleek-shot on a still day, and against the wind two really fine shots. The whins lie in wait for a sliced shot, while on the left is the strong shore of the harbour. There is a delightful account of a round at Bembridge, written years ago by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, in which the writer pulls his shot at this hole on to the beach, and ultimately finds his ball lying upon a ‘dead and derelict dog’—a grisly and, I trust, an unusual hazard. The next two holes are of very similar length, and can both be reached with a drive and a pitching shot; there are whins and a big bunker to trap the erring tee-shot, and in both cases the approach has to be played on to a green which is difficult to the verge of trickiness.

The fourth is a really good hole, some 460 yards in length, and has a thoroughly difficult tee-shot, since the most contemptible of golfing vices will be punished by a large bunker, while the more manly but still reprehensible pull lands the ball in a grassy pit. The fifth is a short hole, gifted with no particular merit and a number of whin bushes, but at the sixth we come to a hole which can hold its own in the very best of company. It has the virtue of presenting to the player the choice of two alternative routes, so that, according as he is long or short, courageous or cautious, he can vary the length of the hole for himself. If he is a strong and ambitious hitter, he will go straight for the second green, carrying the road on the way; the situation is the more poignant because the road is here not metalled, and failure must entail a measure of disaster. On the other hand, if the road be safely carried, he is left with a comparatively short and straightforward second shot, though he has still to cross a bunker of magnificent proportions that guards the green. The more careful, on the other hand, push their tee-shot to a spot further out to the right and short of the road, whence it is still possible to get home, but only by means of a shot that is both longer and harder. There are, I believe, many persons of sound judgment who think that the playing of the tee-shot on to the second green should be prohibited by law, both because all unnecessary risks of doing murder are undesirable and also on the ground that the second stroke by the right-hand line is more difficult and more interesting. Two holes of the drive and pitch type follow; indeed, a strong hitter may hope, under very favourable conditions, to get home with his tee-shot; but at the eighth in particular the drive must be a very straight one, for there are whins to right and left, and our old enemy the road lurks at the edge of the green. Finally, the green is a very tricky one, and altogether discretion at this hole lives fully up to its proverbial characteristics.

At the last hole, which calls for a drive and a good full iron-shot, a four is never to be despised, and with that we start off once more between the whins and the beach, and pass pale and trembling again through the fiery zone. The golf at Bembridge is most certainly attractive, and that it has other and more sterling qualities is shown by the fine players it has produced, the two Toogoods and Rowland Jones amongst them. “By their fruits ye shall know them” is true of golf links as well as of other things.

CHAPTER V.
EAST ANGLIA.

Of the many good courses in East Anglia, I have the tenderest and most sentimental association with Felixstowe, because it was there that I began to play golf. Till quite lately, however, I had not seen the course for a very long while, and my recollections of it were those of a small boy of eight or nine years old. The small boy wore a flannel shirt, brown holland knickerbockers, and bare legs, from which the sun had removed nearly all vestiges of skin. He used to dodge in and out among the crowd, hurriedly playing a hole here and there, and then waiting for unsympathetic grown-ups in red coats to pass him. Willy Fernie was the professional there in those days, and in the zenith of his fame; it was not long before that he had beaten Bob Ferguson for the championship by holing a long putt for a two at the last hole at Musselburgh. Occasionally also another great golfer, Mr. Mure Fergusson, would come down from London to shed the light of his countenance upon the course and be breathlessly admired by the small boy from a respectful distance.

As far as I can remember, my best score then was 70 for one round of the nine-hole course, and so I always pictured Felixstowe to myself as possessing longer holes and bunkers infinitely more terrible than those to be found on any other course. Felixstowe revisited appeared naturally enough to have shrunk a little; the Martello tower that stands on the edge of the first green is not quite so tall as I had pictured it, and some of the holes are quite short, but I still found it one of the most charming and interesting of courses. I came back to it on one of the most perfect of winter golfing days, with the sun shining on the sea and the red roofs of Baudsey in the distance; it was a day to accentuate every romantic feeling, and it was with a perceptible thrill that I teed my ball in front of the very modest bunker, the carrying of which had once been among my wildest dreams.

As far as I could see, the course was almost exactly the same as it always had been. One or two of the bunkers had been rather more abruptly ‘faced’ with walls of turf; and the little hut, which once served Fernie for a shop, and whence he used to issue in a white apron and with a half-made club in his hand, had become a ladies’ club-house; but otherwise the whole nine holes appeared entirely unchanged. Their names came back to me as I played them—the ‘Gate,’ the ‘Tower,’ ‘Eastward Ho!’ ‘Bunker’s Hill,’ the ‘Point’—and the only thing as to which I felt doubtful was the position of a certain bunker that used once to be known as ‘Morley’s Grave,’ and was faced, if I remember rightly, with black timbers that have now vanished.

Looking at the course as impartially as possible, it seems to me now to possess a striking mixture of very easy and extremely difficult shots. There are several tee-shots, for instance, where one may hit out in a very gay and careless spirit and with but the very smallest fear of disaster; there are other shots, and especially second shots up to the greens, where the ball has to be played to a very exact spot, and where no other spot will do. The thing, however, that in a great degree makes the golf at Felixstowe is the truly magnificent finish. With a breeze against the player, as it was when I was there, it is hard to conceive two more splendid and exacting holes than the eighth and ninth, ‘Bunker’s Hill’ and the ‘Point,’ and—here is one of the advantages of a nine-hole course—we have to battle with them four times in one day’s golf. At the risk of exaggerating, I will boldly assert that I have never seen two such fine holes coming consecutively at the end of any golf course.

Those two I will keep till their proper place, and we will begin at the first with a drive over a sandy hollow into open country. A bad slice may see us labouring upon the seashore, but if we keep well to the left there is no great difficulty, and a firm pitch over a cross-bunker should land us safely on a big open green—it is, in fact, a double green—between the hut and the Martello tower. The second, or ‘Gate,’ is a short hole with a very billowy green; indeed, one little valley, in which the hole is sometimes placed, is shaped for all the world like a horse trough, and the ball will always come rolling back from its steep sides, and must almost infallibly end very near the hole. After this come three thoroughly good two-shot holes—the ‘Bank,’ the ‘Tower,’ and ‘Bent Hills’—at all three of which the tee-shot is quite easy, and the second shot both interesting and difficult; at both the fourth and fifth there is an old-fashioned, honest cross-bunker, which has to be carried if we are to get near the hole, and if the wind is adverse and the ground slow, nothing but a really good brassey shot will suffice. At the sixth—‘Eastward Ho!’—a drive and a running shot with the iron takes us close up to Baudsey Ferry and another Martello tower, and then we turn homeward for the ‘Ridge’—a drive and a short pitch; at both these holes we should be hoping and trying for threes, and they are neither of them possessed of any particular difficulty. So far we may have done very well, and our score should not greatly exceed an average of fours, but now comes Bunker’s Hill, to be played, as we will imagine, against a fair breeze. The drive is comparatively simple, but for the second we must hit a very full shot as straight as an arrow; the green is quite a small one, guarded on the right by a road and a wilderness of thick grass beyond, while in front and to the left is sand in abundance. To play short is the act of a coward, and there will be a certain splendour even in our failure, for it will be failure on a grand and expensive scale. This is true, even in a greater degree, of the ‘Point,’ a hole that must have wrecked the hopes of many a prospective medal winner; nay, there cannot be such a thing as a prospective medal winner at Felixstowe till he has played the second shot to the Point for the second time. There is some chance of trouble from the tee, for besides the bunker immediately in front, there is a long tongue of sand that stretches inwards from the road at such a distance that it may well catch a fairly well-struck ball. We will assume, however, that we are safely on the crest of the hill, with the ball neither very far above or below us—this latter a considerable assumption. The flag is fluttering in the distance close to the first tee at the range of an absolutely full shot, and on the very narrowest, most tapering strath imaginable. To the right is a field, which is out of bounds; to the left is a hollow of broken, sandy country; close to the hole is the seashore, but that we shall hardly reach against the wind. Here, if our score be good or our adversary in trouble, we may play short without much shame, but even so we shall have to play very short and very accurately, and the third shot will not be without peril. It is a grand four—something more than a steady five, a likely six; really a tremendous hole with which to end. Everybody must long to go back to Felixstowe, solely in order to master the Point thoroughly, but they will never do it; it is a hole of such transcendent quality that is must beat us in the end.

There are four courses in Norfolk, which naturally divide themselves into two groups of near neighbours, Cromer and Sheringham, Brancaster and Hunstanton. The two former are of the type which may be not too respectfully denominated inland-super-mare. The sea is there, and very nice it looks. The courses are close to the sea—so close that they spend some of their time, especially at Cromer, in falling into it; but the turf is not the crisp and sandy turf of the links. It is the down turf, such as we find at Eastbourne or Brighton, very pleasant and springy to walk on, but—not quite the right thing. There is a considerable family likeness between the two courses. Both are situated on the top of a cliff; both have fine, bold sweeping undulations and hillsides dotted here and there with gorse bushes, and both are to a large extent dependent on the artificial bunker.

Cromer, like Felixstowe, makes me feel a very old golfer, because, when I first played there, there was a little ladies’ course along the edge of the cliff, which has many, many years since toppled peacefully over into the German Ocean. Later on I saw an excellent seventeenth hole share the same fate, and I suppose the poor first hole must go the same way some time. It is particularly sad, because the holes on the down land near the cliff constitute the most attractive part of the course. The holes inland, which were added later, are long and well bunkered, and have doubtless all the Christian virtues, but they are just a little agricultural and uninspiring.

It is certainly to the old holes that the memory returns most fondly. The club-house stands in the bottom of a deep hollow, with hills rising pretty steeply out of it on three sides, and the first tee-shot has to be driven straight up a gully between two of them. Then comes a shot demanding the agility of a chamois and a maximum of local knowledge. With the left foot a good deal higher than the right we play an iron-shot into the distance, and if all goes well, shall find the ball on a green which is walled in by cops and bunkers. If all goes ill, it is possible that we lose it over the cliff, but for such a disaster we shall need hooking powers of no mean order.

The third is another spirited hole, where we plunge down a steep hill between two lines of bracken to a green in the bottom of the valley. Then we retire to a vantage point on the left, and fire over the heads of our immediate successors on the putting green. After some little dodging about among gorse bushes, we dash down hill again—a very long way this time—and then play an adroit little pitch up to a plateau cut out of the face of the neighbouring mountain. Then we leave the nice down turf to pass for a while on to undisguisedly inland holes, which stretch away towards Overstrand. As I said before, there is nothing very thrilling about these holes, but we shall need good, honest flogging if we are to cope with them successfully. I prefer to come back to the sixteenth, which, with a strong wind blowing, as it not infrequently does, takes a great deal of playing. There is more plunging to be done—down into one valley with precipitous sides, then up a long hill, and finally on to a green that sits perched on the crest; there are also cross-bunkers, and there is bracken to the left and the mighty ocean to the right. Finally, for the last hole we drop down once more into the deep hollow from which we started our mountaineering. No more than a nice firm iron-shot is needed, and we shall be holing out in a comfortable three in front of the club-house; but the distance is infinitely deceitful, so much so that once—on the occasion of an exhibition match—Herd taking his brassey, and relying on the misleading advice of his caddy, carried not only the green, but the club-house as well.

From Cromer to Sheringham is but a few miles, and we may play a morning round on one course and an afternoon round at the other. At Sheringham we shall be called upon to do only a moderate amount of climbing and some of the very stoutest hitting with the brassey that has ever been required of us. The theory of the good-length hole has been carried almost to its ultimate limit there, and unless the wind be favourable and the ground uncommonly fast, cleeks and driving irons will be no manner of good to us. Strenuous punching with the brassey is the order of the day, and even so, unless we have been hitting the ball as clean as a whistle, we shall say to the long-suffering Mr. Janion, “Hang it all; you never ought to have put the tee back at the ninth hole. Braid himself with a Dreadnought could not get there in two.”

Some of these two-shot holes at Sheringham are really of extraordinary splendour, and give the lie to those who say that with a rubber-cored ball golf is no longer an athletic exercise. There are the second and fourth, for example, which run parallel to one another, so that by no means can we hope to have the wind with us both ways. The fourth needs a particularly long second, for there is a deep cross-bunker in front of the green. It is just a little like the last hole at Muirfield, and we must pick the ball well up—no scuffling and scrambling will do—and hit a ball with a long, swooping carry that shall fall spent and lifeless on the green beyond. After this hard work we are let down more easily, and a drive and a pitch should suffice at the fifth and sixth. The latter is a very attractive hole, with the most glorious tee-shot from a high hill, a fine view of the sea, and a fascinating approach-shot at the end, which we can pitch or run according as seems best to us.

All this time I have been talking of nothing but long holes, and that is to do the course an injustice, for there are some very pleasant short ones. The third is a hole that one might expect to find at Hoylake—a pitch over the angle of a field, which is bounded by walls of turf; it is one of the remnants of the old nine-hole course, and therefore regarded with a jealous and quite justifiable affection. The greens are excellent throughout the course, and the number of people who drive off between sunrise and sunset on a summer’s day shows that Sheringham does not suffer from a lack of popularity.

I should imagine that Brancaster, before golf was introduced there, must have been quite one of the quietest and most rural spots to be found in England. Even now it is wonderfully peaceful, and has a distinct charm and character of its own. We get out at Hunstanton Station, and drive a considerable number of miles along a nice, flat, dull east country road till we get to the tranquil little village, with a church and some pleasant trees and an exceedingly comfortable Dormy House. In front of the village is a stretch of grey-green marsh, and beyond the marsh is a range of sandhills, and that is where the golf is.

The great defect of Brancaster used to be the thinness and poverty of the turf. The holes were splendidly conceived, and the carries blood-curdling; but the sand was so near the surface that the lies were none of the best, and the putting greens sometimes of the worst. I retain a vivid recollection of a visit to Brancaster with a somewhat irascible friend. He greeted me at the Dormy House door with the depressing words:

“It’s utterly impossible to play here. We had better take the next train back.”

“Oh, no,” I said cheerfully. “As we have come here, I think we had better play.”

“Very well,” he rejoined. “Of course, you won’t mind putting with your niblick. A mashie is no good at all.”

We stayed, and personally I enjoyed myself; I don’t think my friend did, and certainly the greens were of a surpassing vileness. All that is changed now, and by some miracle of industry the course is a velvety carpet, and the greens are as of the greens of Sandwich, with plenty of good, holding grass upon them. Good greens are all that Brancaster needed, and now it has got them. Perhaps there is one more thing needed, and that is a stout man with a spade to dig a few more bunkers; but that want, I believe, is in course of being or has actually been remedied by now.

In the days of the gutty it was most emphatically a driver’s course, since nobody could get over the ground without exceptionally honest hitting. Even now, when the pampering Haskell has noticeably reduced its terrors, it is still a driver’s course, in the sense that it is one on which one derives the maximum of sensual pleasure from opening one’s shoulders for a wooden club shot. Moreover, long driving does pay—for the matter of that, it pays anywhere—because there are several second shots which are enormously more formidable, when they have to be played with something like a full shot. There is, for instance, the ninth—a hole of which men used to speak with the same reverential awe with which they alluded to the ‘Maiden’ at Sandwich. Certainly that bunker in front of the green is sufficiently desperate, and to be compelled to approach the hole with a brassey may well inspire fear, but a good drive on a calm day should leave us little more than a firm half-iron shot to play, and then we can afford to treat the bunker almost with contempt. The same remark applies in a measure to the fourth hole, and likewise to the fourteenth. There are beautifully guarded greens and alarming bunkers, and just the extra yards gained by a good drive make a world of difference in easiness of the approach.

Few things are more terrifying than the first hole at Brancaster on a cold, raw, windy morning, when our wrists are stiff and our beautiful steely-shafted driver feels like a poker. There is a bunker—really a very big, deep bunker—right in front of our noses, and stretching away for a hundred yards or so, and the early morning ‘founder’ that would send the ball ricochetting away for miles at the first hole at Hoylake or St. Andrews brings us to immediate grief. There is nothing very thrilling about the second shot, and the next two holes, although good enough, must remain unsung. At the fourth, however, we come to a thoroughly entertaining hole; the second shot has to be played from a plain, over a hill, and on to something that one might call a plateau, were it not that such a term hardly does justice to the curliness of the green.

There is a fascinating little pitch over a kind of gorge, and on to another plateau for the fifth; but the hole on the way out is, I think, the eighth. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else, as far as I know. I can think of no better simile to describe it than that of a man crossing a stream by somewhat imperfect stepping-stones, so that he has to make a perilous leap from one to the other. There are, as it were, three tongues or spits of land; on the first is the tee, on the third is the green, and between them lie strips of marsh, a sandy waste on which we may get a good lie, but are infinitely more likely to get a bad one. There is a safe, conservative method of playing the hole, which consists of a second shot along the second tongue, followed by a hop over the marsh on to the green. On the other hand, there is a more dashing policy, whereby we go out for a big shot off the tee, and try to reach the third tongue in our second stroke. The first plan is reminiscent of the methods of Allan Robertson, who, we are told, used to play a certain hole at St. Andrews in three short spoon shots; the second belongs to the more daring methods of to-day. The wind, of course, has a great deal to say to our tactics, but, however we play the hole, we have got to hit all our shots as they should be hit, and that is as much as to say that the hole is a good one.

The ninth I have already spoken of, and with an adverse wind it is undoubtedly a magnificent hole. With the wind behind it becomes much more commonplace, but wherever the wind, we are not likely to be quite happy till we have left it behind in a scoring competition. In a match we may treat it cavalierly enough, and therefore successfully, but in a medal there is a chance of an overwhelming disaster as a punishment for just one bad shot. We may carry the bunker itself, and yet with a pull we may plunge into a hedge of brushwood or on to the seashore beyond it. We may be just short with our second—a matter of six inches perhaps—and we shall be battering the bunker’s unyielding face till our card is shattered and wrecked. If a bunker be only big enough and bad enough, it is undeniably difficult to treat it with just the right admixture of contempt and respect.

The first few holes on the way home do not appear to me particularly thrilling, but when we get to the fourteenth there is a really good second to be played over a ghastly bunker on to a small well-guarded green. The sixteenth provides an ingenious example of the plateau hole, and there is a bunker that takes no denial guarding the home green.

Brancaster is like one or two other courses—Harlech and Sandwich are those that come into my mind. The golf is not desperately difficult golf if one is hitting the ball steadily into the air, but the occasional top which we may allow ourselves with something like impunity on more difficult courses spells ruin. If the punishment of the utterly bad shots was the aim and object of all golf, these three courses would be the best in the world. I don’t think they are any of them quite as good as that, but they all provide the very jolliest of golf, and Brancaster is not the least jolly of the three.

Hunstanton is very amusing golf; it is more than that, for it is for the most part very good golf. Perhaps it is a little unfairly overshadowed in public estimation by its near neighbour Brancaster, which is altogether on rather a bigger and grander scale. Brancaster has the faults which are apt to go with its peculiar virtues; it gives the player just a little too much rope, an accusation that is not lightly to be made against Hunstanton. They had a visitation from Braid at Hunstanton a year or two back, and he left a most destructive trail of bunkers behind him; wonderfully cunningly devised they are, so that if we narrowly avoid one we are very likely to be caught in another or ‘covering’ bunker, just as we were rejoicing at our unmerited escape.

The outgoing nine holes at Hunstanton are nearly all good; the home-coming half is much more unequal in quality. The last two holes always made a fine finish, but some of the preceding holes were once of rather poor quality. Braid’s bunkers, however, and the stretching of tees, and a radical change at the thirteenth have worked wonders, and nowadays a low score at Hunstanton, though perfectly possible, has to be earned by sound and accurate golf.

We begin just as at Brancaster, with a most terrifying bunker to carry. It is a magnificent bunker and a very good one-shot hole, but these caverns in front of the nervous starter do most sadly retard progress on a crowded green. The second and third are really fine holes both of them, especially the second, which wants two good shots and a pitch, with accurate going all the way. The fifth demands two of the best shots to carry a cop in front of the green; there is, moreover, a chance of slicing into the river Hun. At the sixth we play a blind pitch into a kind of amphitheatre among sandhills—a hole which is picturesque but fluky; but at the eighth we come to a really fine hole—the best on the course—with a fine slashing second over the corner of a field that is out of bounds. It is a hole where we must decide on our own policy on the tee, and either go as close as may be to the field to begin with or else reluctantly put aside all our noblest ideals and play pawkily to the left for a five.

On the way home we have at the tenth an excellent and teasing tee-shot along one of those narrow necks which every ‘architect’ must long for, and a good eleventh as well. Then the course suffers rather a relapse, but the seventeenth and eighteenth are worth much fine gold. Certainly there is an element of luck about the lie off the tee-shot at the seventeenth, but if only we are lucky and the wind be not too strong against us, we can hit out manfully, and the ball will sail away over a hill and a prodigious big bunker in its face on to a nice big green. The last is even better, with its narrow and billowy green, guarded by a bunker in front, another to the right, and a horrid hard road to the left. If I add that I once did these two holes in consecutive threes it is not in a spirit of boasting, but merely to recall a sensation of exquisite bliss. Hunstanton is very good golf of the most genuine and sandy kind. If it is not in the highest class, it is at least agreeably near to it.