Burns, anglicé streams, are a great feature of Carnoustie. Indeed one friend of mine returned from a visit there declaring that he had got burns badly on his nerves, and that the entire course was irrigated by them. However, it is not so much burns as sandhills that are likely to cause our downfall at the beginning. Of these hilly holes, the second, by name the ‘Valley,’ is a really fine one, and decidedly one of the best on the course. It is dog-legged in character, and has a distinct flavour of some of the holes at Prince’s, since with the tee-shot the player carries just as much of the hill in front of him as he dares, and gains a proper advantage for a bold and successful shot. The drive is directed towards a guide flag on a hill top, and if all goes well we are over in the valley. Then follows a beautiful second shot up a narrow neck, with a bunker on the left and other trouble on the right; 385 yards is the Valley’s length, and Bogey does the hole in four. It is certainly one of the holes that he plays in his best form, for he very often takes five over holes that are no longer and not nearly so difficult or so interesting. Of the other holes on the way out, most are decidedly long, except the fifth, which is a simple enough short hole, and ‘South America,’ before described, is as good as any of them.

On the way home there is a somewhat awe-inspiring second shot at the tenth, where we have to carry a hill, out of the face of which two bunkers have been cut out and appropriately christened the ‘Spectacles.’ The twelfth has a pleasing name, ‘Jockey’s Burn,’ and the thirteenth has a pleasing putting green. The fourteenth, by name the ‘Flagstaff,’ is a good long and narrow hole, where the hills crowd in close upon us, and we must keep straight along the valley. The best hole on the way home, however, is probably the sixteenth, or ‘Island,’ where there is but one way to secure an easy and comfortable approach, and that consists of pushing your tee-shot out to the right so that the ball comes to rest upon a very narrow neck. Take an easier route from the tee, and you will be left with as unpleasant a pitch as need be, and the greedy waters of a burn running between you and the hole. Burns play an important part at both the last two holes also, for one has to be carried from the seventeenth tee and another menaces the pitch on to the home green. There really is some justification for the nervous golfer who has water on the brain after a round at Carnoustie.

CHAPTER XI.
THE COURSES OF THE EAST LOTHIAN AND EDINBURGH.

There is probably no other golfing centre that is quite so good as Gullane, in the East Lothian. If the golfer can only get up early enough in the morning, and has the strength to do it, he can play on seven courses on one long summer’s day. At his very door is a trinity of courses—Gullane, New Gullane, and New Luffness—which, to the eye of the stranger, are indistinguishable the one from the other. From Gullane Hill to the Luffness Club-house is one huge stretch of turf, and such turf! the finest, smoothest, and most delicate that ever was seen. It has been said of various people—I do not know who was the original subject—that nobody could be so wise as so-and-so looked; likewise, it might be said that no greens could be so good as the Gullane and Luffness greens look. Nevertheless, they are very good indeed, and so is the golf.

Till quite lately there was a marked distinction between the two Gullane courses. The new course was long, testing, and difficult; the old course was a place of divine putting greens and pretty pitching shots; but it made no great demands on the athletic powers of its devotees. There was no more delightful course in the world for those whose game consists, to quote the Golfer’s Manual, written in 1857, in “Spooning a ball gently on to a table of smooth turf, when a longer shot would land them in grief.” Now all this has been changed—the course has burst forth into new life and length, and its older and gentler and, possibly, more lovable qualities have gone. It was inevitable that there should be some to regret the change, but the result is now that the visitor to Gullane has two really fine, difficult courses at his own front door, both over 6000 yards long. The old course runs right down to the sea, and there are fine views of the Firth of Forth, while, from the new course, we look at another charming view in Aberlady Bay.

Close to the two Gullane courses, a little further in the direction of Aberlady, is New Luffness, another admirable course. Here we must keep most particularly straight, for the fairway is narrow, and there is plenty of rough at the sides, including some particularly pernicious objects (I am no botanist, and do not know their names) which have tall, wiry stalks and sadly impede the club.

It is really a beautiful bit of natural golfing country, and we are far enough away from the houses of Gullane to enjoy a perfect sense of peace and quietude. Not far off, again, is Kilspindie, on the west side of Aberlady Bay, another charming spot where we may play golf that is good without being too desperately difficult.

We must get back to Gullane, however, where at the far end of the village, on the road to North Berwick, is a course of greater fame than any of those I have mentioned—Muirfield, the home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers, and one of the select band of championship courses. Muirfield has had rather a chequered career in regard to public estimation, and has been at different times very violently abused, partly because the Honourable Company, in leaving Musselburgh, took the championship with them away from its ancient home: partly on account of the intrinsic merits or demerits of the links. The Open Championship was for the first time played at Muirfield in 1892, and it is possible that the course was hardly good enough or long enough for a championship course. Certainly the score with which the championship was won was phenomenally low for those days of gutty balls. It was altogether a memorable championship, for several reasons; it marked the beginning of the decline of Musselburgh, it was played for the first time over 72 instead of 36 holes, and it was won by an amateur, Mr. Hilton. That change from one to two days’ play may be said to have robbed another great amateur of the honour of being open champion, for at the end of the first day Mr. Horace Hutchinson had a handsome lead. On the second day, alas! an unfortunate encounter with that fatal wood at the very first hole was the beginning of a series of disasters. There is always something bitterly hard about being the first to suffer through a reform, however excellent it may be in the abstract, and I have always felt dreadfully sorry for Mr. Hutchinson.

However, one amateur’s loss was another’s gain, and Mr. Hilton, after being eight strokes behind on the first day, came away with a wonderful game on the second, nearly doing the first hole in one, holing two pitches, and racing so fast round the course as nearly to be the death of an ancient partner. It is interesting to read in Mr. Hilton’s reminiscences that it was only two days before the event that he decided to enter for this momentous championship, and that his course of training consisted of three rounds in one day immediately following a night journey. Here is a fine chance for a confusion of thought between cause and effect.

Muirfield has been a good deal altered since then, and, if it will never be among the most prepossessing of courses, it is now both sound and interesting, while, given any appreciable amount of wind, it is thoroughly difficult. It is curious that it has but little outward attractions. There is a fine view of the sea and a delightful sea wood, with the trees all bent and twisted by the wind; then, too, it is a solitary and peaceful spot, and a great haunt of the curlews, whom one may see hovering over a championship crowd and crying eerily amid a religious silence. All this is charming, but there is a fatal stone wall that runs round the course, giving the impression of an inland park, and it is, I believe, this purely sentimental objection that has brought Muirfield so many detractors. Not that there are not or have not been other objections of a more practical kind. The course has twice had to be lengthened, and there was, moreover, a time when the ground near the edges of the greens was very spongy and uncertain in character. The greens are rather small—this is entirely a virtue—and, consequently, there are many little chips and running shots to be played; these, when the greens were hard and the surrounding country was soft, were apt to travel upon the wings of chance, and there were many lamentations. Now, however, the ground has hardened considerably, and at the last Amateur Championship there were no complaints on this score, although the greens themselves were difficult and, indeed, almost tricky.

The rough consists of thick, coarse grass, and there is, of course, a measure of chance in the lies that one may get; one may be able to use a brassey, but a niblick is infinitely the more likely club. When Mr. Herman de Zoete played so finely in the championship of 1903, it was said, mainly as an argument against the rubber ball, that he was never on the course at all, but it must be remembered that he was holing out quite wonderfully well, and he is, moreover, gifted with exceptional powers in the way of moving mountains of long grass. For weaker brethren many excursions into the rough are almost certain to be fatal.

Muirfield is one of the comparatively few courses that begin with a one-shot hole, with the result that the starting of a round is rather a slow business, since there is wood to the left and some alluring bunkers to the right, and the erratic are likely to be an unconscionable time a-playing. Never was there a greater necessity to resist the temptation to pull than there is at the second; instinct keeps calling in our ears for a glorious, long hook, and there is nothing so likely to prove fatal. It is one of those puzzling shots where we drive at a wide angle on to a narrow fairway, whence, if all goes well, a good iron shot will land the ball on to a very well-guarded green, fast in pace and billowy in conformation. It is a capital four-hole, and so is the third, which is really a splendid example of how good a hole of no particular length can be. In the first place, we must hit straight, and we must also be exceedingly careful not to hit too far. If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the green very comfortably in our second. It is a slippery, elusive, and vindictive sort of green, however, full of unexpected quicknesses and slownesses, and it is one thing to be there in two and quite another to be down in four: altogether a very interesting hole to see played by somebody else.

Of the next few holes, the fifth is perhaps the outstanding one, on account of its length: the others are all of them good and all of them, as regards length, much of a muchness. We remember a different feature at each of them—the big carry over the boarded bunker at the sixth, the pond at the seventh, and the tall sandhill, rising rather abruptly in front of the tee, at the ninth—but we generally have the same iron club in our hands for the second shot. At the eleventh, however, we come to a really splendid hole, at which each shot has infinite terrors. The tee-shot has to be played down a narrow spit of land, with thick, rough grass on the right, a bunker encroaching on the left, and a continuation of the same bunker straight ahead of us. Nor must the ubiquitous wall, also on the left, be entirely despised. The very least hook will plunge us into the left-hand end of the bunker, a slice means the long grass, and a very long, straight ball may go too far and meet a sandy fate. The shot is so narrow and frightening that it is no sign of cowardice to take a cleek, but then a very long second shot is necessary, unless the wind is strong behind, in order to get home. This second shot, too, is fraught with almost equal perils, for the wall to the left comes very decidedly into the range of practical politics, and there is a long bunker to the right. It is a hole at which one need never despair, and I wish I could remember accurately the exact number of balls Mr. Harold Hambro hit over the wall in 1903 and yet won the hole from Mr. Edward Blackwell.

The twelfth needs a high carrying second over a deep bunker; and the thirteenth has one of the most terrifying tee-shots that I know along a narrow strath, with bunkers on either side. Moreover, not only is it necessary to hit straight, but it is intensely profitable to hit a long way, for if we can only hit far enough, we may play a running shot on to that sliding, sloping green, whereas if we have to pitch on to the slope over the corner of the right-hand bunker, a five is, to put it mildly, far more likely than a three. The fifteenth, again, is a beautiful drive and pitch hole, with a number of alternative routes, all of which want accurate hitting, and all leading up to a most difficult approach shot. At the sixteenth we play short of a huge cross-bunker in our second, unless we are taking serious risks; and at the seventeenth our second shot is once more a tricky pitch on to a sloping green. I do not think I ever saw a hole better played than Mr. Maxwell played this seventeenth in the final of the championship of 1909, when he stood one down with two to play. The only way in which he was in the least likely to get the three, that he needed so sorely, was to play his pitch along a certain gully that led to the hole. In order to get at that gully, he had to play his tee-shot well away to the left, keeping as close as he dared to the left-hand rough. He played the shot perfectly, ‘pinching’ the rough successfully, and was left with a pitch straight up the gully: played that perfectly too: was left with a putt of some four feet, and holed it. The strokes were so clearly intended, and so bravely played, and in all human probability they made the difference between Mr. Maxwell winning or losing the championship.

Finally, the last hole is a good, honest, two-shot hole straight up to the club-house, with a trench bunker right across the course. In respect to this hole, golfing history gives rather an interesting example of the difference between the gutty and the rubber-core. When Vardon won his first championship, he was left, at this hole, with a four to win and a five to tie with Taylor. He debated long over his second shot, and then played short with his iron, got his five, and made sure of the tie—a tie which, as all the world knows, he won. Nowadays, comparatively modest hitters often get home with iron clubs, and it would need a very stiff wind to deter Vardon from attacking that big bunker with his second. It is rather salutary for us sometimes to be reminded of how much we owe to the rubber-cored ball, and Muirfield is a course that is continually dinning the fact into our ears. There are so many holes there that would be so much harder for the moderate driver if he had to drive a solid ball; he could be dreadfully out of conceit with himself at the end of the round.

It is quite a short drive—not with a club—from Muirfield to North Berwick, but there is none of that resemblance between the courses that one might expect between such near neighbours. Muirfield may be called a narrow course of soft turf; North Berwick an open course of hard turf. Moreover, one may chance to have Muirfield to one’s self and the curlews, whereas at North Berwick are to be found all the advantages or disadvantages of a fashionable watering-place. Whatever may be thought of their respective merits from a strictly golfing point of view, it can hardly be gainsayed that North Berwick has the best of it in point of looks. No golf course could look lovelier than North Berwick on a bright summer’s day, when the Bass rock, the home of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only holiday-making man is entirely vile.

No course has ever undergone a more complete metamorphosis, for whereas it is now long enough for any reasonable person, it was once noted for the abnormal number of threes that could be done in one round. Mr. Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton of the “sporting little links of North Berwick,” and added “You might just as well leave your driver at home. If you are even a medium driver, it is scarcely ever in your hand.” Incredible scores were recorded by Mr. Laidlay and Bernard Sayers, perhaps the most astounding being Mr. Laidlay’s 33 for the first ten holes. Such a course was almost bound to produce a race of wonderfully adroit pitchers. Of the older generation, Mr. Laidlay and Sayers are still almost as good as ever, and the race of fine pitchers is not extinct, for amongst others there is Mr. Maxwell, whose obvious power rather blinds the unobservant eye to his beautiful short game; and Mr. Whitecross, a player much less well known, but a wonderfully deft wielder of the mashie. Mr. Whitecross’s pitching at Muirfield in 1909 more nearly approached the supernatural than anything I have ever seen. If I remember aright, he actually holed two pitches in his matches with Mr. Angus Hambro and Mr. W.A. Henderson, and laid the ball several times on the lip of the hole; one shot in particular against Mr. Hambro, wherein the ball trickled very slowly down the steep slope of the seventeenth green and lay absolutely dead, was the most perfect shot conceivable, and was played, besides, at an intensely critical moment.

It would seem, therefore, that though North Berwick is no longer short, it is still an exceptionally good school in which to learn the art of approaching. There is even now a good deal of approaching to do, and the man who is driving well may hope to reach the green fairly often with pitching shots of varying length. For these shots not only is plenty of skill essential, but a measure of local knowledge is also useful, and the unaccustomed stranger is apt to think and say that it is possible in two successive rounds to play the approach shots equally well with vastly different results.

Personally, I have a considerable respect for North Berwick, born of fear and conscious incompetence. I always have that respectful feeling towards a course where the ground is a little hard and bumpy. Given soft, velvety turf, one should be able, to a certain extent, to disguise one’s weakness, for it is then an easy matter to get the ball well into the air, and the short putts may be firmly hit. When the turf is bare, one has to do all the work one’s self, and though North Berwick has not the uncompromising hardness of St. Andrews, neither has it any of the kindly and flattering qualities of Sandwich. The unheeding multitude cut out many divots and leave a good many difficult lies behind them, and the ball will very easily run away from one on the putting green; indeed, at Point Garry, it is apt, if too vigorously struck, to run into the sea.

It is a terrible place this double green of Point Garry, worn, bare, and sloping down to the rocks and the beach, and we come to it, besides, at two of the most agitating moments of the round; at the first hole, when we have not had quite enough golf, and at the seventeenth, when, if the match has been a fierce one, we have perhaps had too much. Our terror is perhaps less acute at the first hole, because we are then playing on the part of the green that is furthest from the sea; but even so great trouble may befall us. I always remember a newspaper account of Mr. Balfour, when he was Prime Minister, playing in a medal at North Berwick. “The premier,” so it ran, “made an unfortunate start: put his second on the rocks and took eight to the hole.” We ought, generally speaking, to do better than eight; indeed, we may hope for a three—that is to say, if we are playing from the forward tee, and the wind is not against us. Then we carry the road and reach the green in one most excellent shot, but if the circumstances are at all unfavourable, we shall doubtless do better to play short from the tee with an iron club and be well content with a four.

The second and third are both fine holes, and at the second we have an added interest in the possibility of killing some one upon the sea-shore. With a fine long shot we may hope to carry a portion of the beach that eats its way into the course, but it is not well to be too adventurous; anything approaching a slice will leave us playing niblick shots among the pebbles and nurserymaids, and we can play reasonably well to the left and yet hope to get home next time with a well-struck second. At the third, when we carry the wall in our second, we may be content with a five, though a four is not impossible, and then a rather unusual hazard awaits us at the hole called ‘Carl Kemp.’ If we drive straight we shall have a sufficiently easy pitch to play, but the green lies in a narrow pass, with rocks on either side, and no one can predict the fate of a ball that pitches upon a rock; it may bound incredibly both as regards distance and direction.

Soon after this we get into a country of flat and, if the truth be told, rather dull holes. Of the holes at this end of the course, it may be said that they are good enough when the wind is against, but they never can be very thrilling. Even the quarry and the eel burn, though they help to fix them in the mind, cannot make us love them very passionately; and as for the ninth, when we drive down to the edge of a cross-bunker and then chip over on to the green, that, I vow, is a thoroughly commonplace and uninteresting hole. It has some compensation to offer, in that it is the chosen pitch of a purveyor of ginger beer; it was here that the famous Crawford used to abide, and no hole could be entirely dull with Crawford on the tee.

It is not till we reach the wall that we come to a hole that makes a very strong appeal to the imagination. Here we shall have to play a cunning little pitch in our best North Berwick manner, for the green lies immediately beyond the wall, and we must contrive to stop the ball reasonably dead with our mashie. We can, however, make the shot more or less difficult, according as we drive well or ill. If we can hold the ball well to the left—close, but not too close under the wall—we shall have more room to pitch, and may hope for a putt for three; but a drive pushed far out to the right makes it almost impossible to stop at all near the hole next time.

‘Perfection’ and ‘The Redan’ are two very famous names, and the ‘Redan’ is one of the select holes, the features of which have been more or less faithfully reproduced on the National Golf Course on Long Island, U.S.A. First of the two comes ‘Perfection,’ the fourteenth, a very fine two-shot hole. With the tee-shot we must hug as closely as we dare the side of a big hill on the left, and if we fall into the opposite extreme, we may slice our ball among the rocks of ‘Carl Kemp.’ All being well, we have a reasonably easy second over a bunker; but we cannot see where we are going, and have the uncanny feeling that we are hitting straight into the sea. The ‘Redan’ is a beautiful one-shot hole on the top of a plateau, with a bunker short of the green to the left and another further on to the right, and we must vary our mode of attack according to the wind, playing a shot to come in from the right or making a direct frontal attack.

At the sixteenth we cross the wall once more, and may hope to reach in two shots the ‘Gate’ hole, standing on another plateau—an exceedingly diminutive one, by the way—close to the high road. Now we arrive at that most destructive of holes, ‘Point Garry,’ and even if we do not, like Mr. Balfour, make an unfortunate start, we are very likely to make an unfortunate ending. In our second shot we shall have to decide whether or not to carry a bunker that stretches across our path, and then comes the crucial shot, the approach on to that dreadful green that slopes right away from us to the sea—without the ghost of a charitable back wall. It is so frightening that we are strongly tempted to approach it on the instalment system, and it is really wonderful how many instalments may be necessary, as with limbs palsied with terror, we push and poke the ball over that treacherous and slippery surface. ‘Point Garry’ safely over, the last hole seems absurdly simple, and, if we do not top into the road or pull into Hutchison’s shop, we should end with a four; indeed, our putt for a possible three should not be a very long one. When all is over, we shall almost certainly agree that the best golf at North Berwick is to be found at the beginning and end of the course, but we could hardly bear it if all the holes were as exciting as ‘Point Garry.’ Those flat holes at the far end serve, no doubt, a useful, though unobtrusive, purpose.

So much for the East Lothian courses, but while we are within hail of Edinburgh, we must pay a visit to Musselburgh, the home of the Parks and once the home of the championship, now shorn of its honour, and little more than a name to English golfers. The way to Musselburgh lies for the most part through factory chimneys and slag heaps, nor is the first glimpse of the course much more prepossessing than the surrounding scenery. It looks like an ordinary common on the outskirts of a town, rather flat, and devoid of features, rather hard and rough, not unlike in character that blank stretch of turf at St. Andrews which lies between the club-house and the burn. Yet if, after we have played over the course, we adhere to this our first view, we shall show ourselves to be persons of superficial minds and of little discernment. It is true that there are comparatively few hazards, and that we ought, therefore, not to get into many of them; but, at the same time, it will gradually dawn upon us that nearly every hole has a governing hazard, to which we must pay due regard—one that will direct our policy for us whether we like it or not. We must not let ourselves be lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that we have occasionally a whole parish to drive into. There is a right line and a wrong line, and if we are very fortunate, or very highly honoured, we may have it pointed out to us and our clubs carried for us by Bob Ferguson, who won the championship three times running, and might have won it a fourth time if Willy Fernie had not done the last hole at Musselburgh in two.

There are but nine holes at Musselburgh, and the whole area of the links is extremely small. The first three holes go along the entire length of the course on the right-hand side; then comes one hole across, four down the left side, and then one more across the other end. Of these nine, the first three are as good holes as you can desire to meet anywhere, whether you play them with a stone-hard gutty, as did the reverent pilgrims of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, or with the soft and bounding rubber-core. The first rejoices in the cheerful name of the ‘Graves,’ owing to the conformation of the putting green, which, with its many little barrows, is like a grass-grown burial-ground. Here two good shots should reach the green, and two very good putts may reach the bottom of the hole. For the second we shall need a five, although a vast hitter may get home with two of his very best. The green is a small plateau at the end of a valley that is long and shallow and narrow, and if we can place the ball with our second shot on exactly the right place, we should have an easy run up and a putt for four; if we are not in the right place, we must play a difficult approach well in order to get a five. Next comes another hole with a famous name—‘Mrs. Forman’s’—and we approach Mrs. Forman’s tavern with two shots to the left, followed by a run up, or—more perilously—by two shots on the dead straight line. By the latter method we may, indeed, get home in two, but we may also be under the posts of the race-course or in an electric tram-car, or in a variety of bunkers, and it may be added that they do not pamper us at Musselburgh by raking the bunkers or trimming the steep over-hanging cliffs thereof.

The fourth is a long one-shot hole in a seaward direction, and the next is ‘Pandy.’ ‘Pandy’ itself is now a flat, ugly bit of hard, dirty sand, and if we do get into it, we should lie well enough to get a long way out again, unless, indeed, we should be so unfortunate as to lie in a tin-pot or a derelict boot. The green is one of which Willy Park has made two famous copies—one at the fifteenth at Huntercombe, the other the eighth at Worplesdon. Whereas, however, there is usually a generous growth of velvety grass on the Huntercombe green, the original green at Musselburgh is of a terrifying keenness. The seventh is a shortish hole of no great interest, and the eighth is the ‘Gas Works,’ which can be reached with a drive and a run up, and has a green which, like most of the others at Musselburgh, seems to accentuate any putting error in an exemplary fashion. Finally, for the ninth and last, there is another short hole, having a big plateau green protected in front by a wavy bank. Some will play to pitch at the bottom of the bank and run up; others to toss the ball high and boldly on to the green. The latter is probably preferable for those whose ambition does not soar above a three, but those who spurn safety and aim at twos will adopt the former plan. Thus ends Musselburgh, which can be compassed in some 35 strokes or less, but will probably cost us appreciably more, for neither the lies nor the greens are easy, and it is extremely easy to drop strokes.

To the English golfer there is something incongruous in the idea of an inland course in Scotland. He goes there for his holidays, and so naturally chooses a seaside course; but Scotland possesses a number of inhabitants who are not always making holiday, and cannot go to the sea as often as they would like, wherefore the necessity for this seeming incongruity. Of the inland Scottish courses, probably the best known is Barnton, near Edinburgh, the home of a golf club of great antiquity and renown, the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, who rank in seniority second only to the Royal Blackheath Club.

The Barnton estate consists of a fine old house and a park, with splendid trees, which was once known as Cramond Regis, and was a hunting seat of the kings of Scotland. From royalty it passed successively into the hands of several noble Scottish families, till it fell into those of the Edinburgh Burgesses, when they decided to leave Musselburgh. That move took place in comparatively modern times, but before that golf had been played in the park by at least one very distinguished golfer, Robert Clark, who wrote Golf: a Royal and Ancient Game. He was at one time tenant of Barnton House, and, as I learn from an interesting article by Mr. James Purves, had some holes cut, including one which necessitated a drive right over the house. When he was annoyed with his game at Musselburgh, he would declare that he had a far better course at his own door.

Whether he would have upheld that pronouncement in cool blood is perhaps to be doubted, for the best park golf in the world cannot attain beyond a certain point, and Barnton is pure park golf. Still, it has undoubtedly many merits, and not least among them is that the greens are as good and true as any in the world. That at least is the general opinion, and I see no reason to doubt it. I cannot, on the other hand, confirm it, because I have only played at Barnton on a Sunday, and the Scottish conscience, although it will let you play, will not let the greens be swept for you, and Sunday golf at Barnton, therefore, involves some encounters with worm casts. It also involves, or did when last I went there, a drive out of Edinburgh with one’s clubs elaborately hidden under horse-cloths and rugs. The principle, however, was that of the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, or rather its exact converse, for the most sedulous burying of the bodies of the clubs did not prevent the head peeping out and so advising all church-going Edinburgh of one’s scandalous project.

It is easy to see that on week days the course must be in absolutely apple-pie order, and that it lacks nothing that the hand of man could do for it. Nearly all the holes want good, straight, accurate play; but, as is the case with this type of golf, they make no passionate appeal to the imagination. There is a nice tee-shot from a height at the ninth, where two really good shots down a valley should take us home; and the eleventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth all want long and straight hitting. At the thirteenth a pleasing variety is introduced in the matter of hazards by two old tombstones, which may catch a badly pulled ball. These, according to Mr. Purves, are memorials of an overflow from the parish churchyard at Cramond at the time of the plague.

CHAPTER XII.
WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON.

Gullane is usually cited as the headquarters from which it is possible to play the largest number of rounds in one day, each round being on a different course, but it is by no means certain that the distinction which is thus given to East Lothian does not really belong to Prestwick and Troon. As one approaches Prestwick, the train seems to be voyaging through one endless and continuous golf course—Gailes, Barassie, Bogside—I write them down pell-mell as they come into my head—Prestwick, St. Nicholas, St. Cuthbert, Troon, and several more beside. Moreover, Troon “surprises by himself,” a prodigious assemblage of courses. There is the course proper, and there is the ‘relief’ course; there is another course, which may be termed the ‘super-relief’ course; and there are various practice grounds consecrated to women and children. The turf is something softer—at least in my imagination—than that of the East Coast courses, and the greens are wonderfully green and velvety, and looking as if they get plenty of rain, as in fact they do.

Of all this galaxy of courses, Prestwick is first and foremost. It is the original home of the Open Championship, one of the championship courses of to-day, and admittedly one of the best of them. A man is probably less likely to be contradicted in lauding Prestwick than in singing the praises of any other course in Christendom. There are probably more people who would put St. Andrews absolutely at the top of the tree, but, whereas nearly everyone would rank Prestwick in the first three, the Fifeshire course has a certain number of bitter enemies who rank it very low indeed. One might almost say that Prestwick has no enemies; everyone admires it, though, naturally, with slightly different degrees of enthusiasm. To say of a human being that he has no enemies is almost to insinuate that he is just a little bit colourless and insipid; but those adjectives have certainly no application to Prestwick, which has a very decided character of its own.

Nowhere is to be found a more beautiful stretch of what is called “natural golfing country.” The ordinary golfer, whose head is not too full of modern architectural ideas, would jump with joy on first beholding Prestwick. There is nothing subtle or recondite about it; it has a beauty which explains itself. There are the great sandhills bristling with bents and the little nestling valleys beyond them, a rushing burn and a stone wall, and it is perfectly clear that man was meant to hit the ball over them. All the ground on the near side of the wall, which is the ground of the old twelve-hole course, is of this glorious ‘natural’ character. “Hullo,” says the player, “here’s a hill: let’s drive over it.” Yet, although it is a little blind and has a measure of what Mr. Hutchinson has euphemistically termed “pleasurable uncertainty,” it is for the most part incontestibly fine golf. “Like Sandwich, only much better,” I have heard it described; but I dislike this slandering and backbiting at poor, dear Sandwich. In one respect, however, it may be permissible to make a comparison very much in favour of Prestwick, that is in the size of the greens. On both courses we hit the ball over a high hill, but whereas at Prestwick we must hit it straight, unless we wish to be left with the trickiest and hardest of little pitches, at Sandwich a far more than reasonably crooked shot may yet land the ball on the edge of a vast green, where a bang with the wooden putter will make up for our deficiencies.

When once the wall is crossed, and what was once called the new ground is reached, the character of the ground changes considerably. There are, it is true, two blind and mountainous tee-shots over the famous ‘Himalayas,’ but they appear rather esoteric than otherwise. The holes on the far side of the wall are in their nature essentially flat, and in one or two instances a little artificial. As one plays the eighth hole alongside the railway by Monkton Station, one cannot repress the feeling that one might as well have stayed inland. Well bunkered and difficult enough is that particular hole, and yet so utterly lacking in the least breath of the sea, and the fairway is just a smooth avenue mowed out of a big field. Still some others of these flattish holes—I shall come to them in their proper places—are undoubtedly very fine holes, and if anyone likes to say that they are in reality better golf than those within the wall, we may still respect his judgment and regard him as a man and brother. Equally we may form a low estimate of his appreciation of the beautiful and romantic, and remain perfectly steadfast in our own allegiance to the ‘Alps,’ the ‘Cardinal,’ and the ’Sea-He’therick.’

The second is quite one of the shortest of short holes on any first-class course, but it is not a bit easy, for a bunker behind the green has now been cut to reinforce the one in front, and the green is generally very keen.

The third is the ‘Cardinal,’ and has done a vast deal of mischief in its time. A topped brassey shot into the cavernous recesses of the bunker was generally thought to have cost Mr. Laidlay a championship when he played Mr. Peter Anderson; and, to come to more modern times, it was in this very same bunker that his supporters saw with horror the great Braid trying to throw away the championship in 1908 by playing a game of racquets against those ominous black boards. Yet, in the ordinary way, if we can but hit a reasonably straight tee-shot, we ought to send our second flying far over the Cardinal’s sandy nob and a good long way on towards the green. Then comes a delicate little pitch over some hummocky ground, or, if we are lucky, a running-up shot, and we find ourselves on a small green under the shadow of the wall, and should obtain a respectable five; a four is, as a rule, the score of heroes only.

At the fourth we cross the wall with a drive that varies in direction with our bravery and skill. If we are very brave, and very skilful, we shall hit a ball with a suspicion of a slice that shall keep close to the rushing waters of the burn, and shall be rewarded with an easy pitch, and haply a putt for three. If we do not trust ourselves, we shall give the burn a wide berth and pull far away to the left, where we should still get a four—but only by means of a longer and harder approach shot.

The fifth is the ‘Himalayas,’ a hole of great fame, but no transcendent merit. A good cleek shot should see us safely over this big hill and on to the green on the other side, which is now guarded by pot-bunkers. All these holes at Prestwick seem to have some tragedy connected with them, and the ‘Himalayas,’ in all human probability, lost Mr. Hilton his third Open Championship in 1898. Just one bad shot—he can hardly have played another during the four rounds: but he made this one fatal mistake with a club that was strange to him (he has told the sad story himself), and took eight to the hole. Yet he finished in the end but two strokes behind the winner, Harry Vardon, and at one time he had actually caught him in this terrible stern chase.

After the ‘Himalayas’ come several holes which do not, like the earlier and later holes, cry aloud for description. The sixth has a sufficiently difficult second on to a plateau green, and there is fierce punishment for the slicer among the bents. The seventh is a long short hole (this is such a convenient expression that it must pass), with rushes to catch a slice; and of the eighth, which runs alongside the railway, I have already said something.

The ninth and tenth are really fine two-shot holes; as far as length is concerned, there are none better on the course, and they are both thoroughly difficult into the bargain. The green at the ninth is especially attractive and difficult, consisting of a little hilly peninsula of turf that seems to jut out from a mainland of rough and bents. At the tenth we sidle along parallel with the range of ‘Himalayas,’ and at the eleventh we cross them with a drive—no cleek this time—for we have to carry as well the burn that runs beyond them. Then we turn our noses for home and make for the wall that we left behind us at the fourth hole. We shall need two full shots, and then a little chip on to a typical Prestwick green; long, narrow, and well guarded by lumps and bumps of various shapes and sizes. If, perchance, the wind is blowing very strongly behind us, we may try to carry the wall in two, and the ball will very likely light on the coping of the wall to bounce thence into unfathomable bents, while we are left lamenting our lack of contemptible prudence.

Now comes the ‘Sea He’therick’—a charming hole with a charming name, where the ball must be driven for the distance of two very full shots along a sort of gully or channel between the sand and bents on the right, and some rough and hillocky country to the left. There is a narrow little green, with odd corners and angles sticking out and well guarded by hummocks, so that if we do get a four we shall probably have to lay a singularly deft little pitch close to the hole. A drive over the ‘Goose-dubs’ brings us to a fairly ordinary fourteenth hole close to the club, and we turn back to play the last four, the famous loop.

The chief characteristic of the fifteenth is that no two persons are agreed on the best way of playing it. We may lash out for death or glory with a driver, or play short with the pusillanimous iron: we may go out to the right, or away to the left, but wherever we try to go we shall heave a sigh of relief if our ball finishes its agitating career upon a piece of turf. Neither is the second an easy shot, for the green is sloping and treacherous, and there are bunkers to right and left. At the sixteenth—the ‘Cardinal’s Back’—there is an insidious little pot-bunker in the middle of the course, and we must drive either to the right or left of it, or perhaps, wisest of all, aim straight at it in the sure and certain hope of a sufficient measure of inaccuracy.

Now we come to the ‘Alps,’ one of the finest holes anywhere, and the finest blind hole in all the world. The drive must be hit straight and true down a valley between two hills, and then comes the second, over a vast grassy hill, beyond which we know that there is a bunker both wide and deep. The ball may clear the hill and yet meet with a dreadful fate, but there is glorious compensation in the fact that if we do clear the chasm, we should be fairly near the hole, and may possibly be putting for a three. With no wind and a rubber-cored ball there is nothing very tremendous in the achievement, but nevertheless it is of the tremendous order of holes, and it takes a stout-hearted man to get a four there at all square and two to play. With a gutty ball it was really a fine long, slashing carry, and to play short was sometimes the better part of valour. Old Willy Park wrecked his chances of yet another championship here in 1861, owing, to quote the appropriately solemn words of the Ayrshire Express, to “a daring attempt to cross the Alps in two, which brought his ball into one of the worst hazards of the green, and cost him three strokes—by no means the first time he has been seriously punished for similar avarice and temerity.” It was in this bunker also that Mr. Tait played his ever-famous shot out of water, and Mr. Ball followed it with a superb niblick shot out of hard wet sand, which is not half as famous as it ought to be. Truly the ‘Alps’ is a hole with a great history.

After this the last hole is easy enough—a flat hole, just a little too long for the ordinary mortal to reach from the tee, save with a wind behind him. It can be reached, however, with a very fine shot, and I shall never forget the scene at the Open Championship in 1908, when Mr. Robert Andrew nearly holed it in one. It was in the qualifying competition, and Mr. Andrew, a strong local favourite and a truly magnificent player, had to do a two to equal Harry Vardon’s record for the course of 72. He struck a gorgeous blow, and the ball sailed away straight as a die, and finished absolutely stone dead. With one wild yell of joy the crowd broke away from the tee, and raced down the slope for the green, even as the British square dashed down the hill after the flying French guard at Waterloo. It was at once a most thrilling and amusing spectacle.

So ends Prestwick; and what a jolly course it is, to be sure! What a jolly place to play, too, for we shall probably have had it reasonably to ourselves. It shares with Muirfield, among the great Scottish courses, the merit of being the private property of the club, and that is a merit that grows greater every year. It is a beautiful spot, moreover, and we may look at views of Arran and Ailsa Craig and the Heads of Ayr if we can allow our attention to wander so far from the game.

Tradition and romance cluster thickly around Prestwick, for it was here that old Tom Morris came in 1851—a little while after he and Allan Robertson had had a difference of opinion about Tom having played with the gutty ball. Here he stayed fourteen years before returning once and for all to his beloved St. Andrews, and it was here that the immortal Young Tom was born and first swung a precocious club. Prestwick was the home of the championship belt, which was competed for there every year from 1860 to 1870, when it passed into the permanent possession of Young Tom, who had won it three times running. If by some potent magic one could summon up the past at will, there is no golfing picture that I should like to see so much as that of Tommy’s third win; 149 was his score for three rounds of the twelve-hole course, and he finished twelve strokes ahead of the two men who tied for second place. Whenever one is too much inclined to laud the golfers of the present to the detriment of those of the past, it is always a wholesome thing to remember that score of 149 round Prestwick. There must have been at least one very great golfer in those days.

The course at Troon is perhaps a little overshadowed by its more famous neighbour, but it is a very fine course nevertheless, especially since it has been lengthened of late years. It has, moreover, one of the finest short holes to be found anywhere. Here dwells Willy Fernie, and here it was that Braid and Herd went down so memorably before Vardon and Taylor in the great foursome over four greens. The Scottish pair left St. Andrews with a small advantage, but in Ayrshire a terrible thing befell them. Taylor and Vardon won so many holes—the number was well in double figures—that they came to the two English courses, St. Anne’s and Deal, with a lead that nothing but a second miracle could take from them—and such miracles do not happen twice; it was surely one of the most extraordinary day’s play in all the history of big matches. Troon, oddly enough, is one of the last places that one would expect such a collapse to occur. We know that when the greens are fast and fiery and not a little rough, a man who becomes afraid of his putter can lose an unlimited number of holes, but the greens at Troon are smooth and true, and of an almost velvety consistency that encourage us to putt above our form. They are certainly one of the features of the course.