There is so much for a beginning, and more views press upon us as we advance along the course. The play is opened with a good hole of drive and iron length, the second brings us back again with a drive and a pitch, and then away we go to the left with one of the cunningest seconds to be played across twin streams, making this third hole of Rome one of the most exacting in the way of approach that is to be found in Italy or even in the whole of Europe. When we come to the sixth we play up to the summit of a high tableland, and as we ascend the hill we pluck from the turf some of the freshest, prettiest crocuses that have ever grown, the course being as nearly thick with them in March as North Berwick is with daisies in the month of May. And from these heights what aview again over towards the city of Rome! Out along that way there is the tomb of Cecilia Metella, Crassus' wife, and away on the boundary there is the church of St. John Lateran and the great dome of St. Peter's. If golf is a royal and ancient game, here is a setting for it. Near to the eighth hole we turned aside to the ruins of an ancient Roman villa, and Santino, my little Italian caddie, with finger excavation, gathered some morsels of polished marble which may have touched the feet of Roman ladies in those great days of old. The line of the tenth comes close to one of those deep-cut streams that flow to feed the hungry Tiber, and in some ways this hole reminds us of the fourth at Prestwick where the Pow Burn insinuates itself close to the golfer's way. At our backs when we stand on the eleventh tee is a cave that might serve for robbers but which really makes an excellent shelter, and it was related that a few weeks before my time in Rome three ambassadors, being the British, the American, and the Austrian, were seen to sit in there and shelter. And who then shall say that, if "only a game," golf has no possibilities and powers in such high crafts as diplomacy? The twelfth is an excellent hole, and so are they all. The sixteenth takes us winding round a big bend between a hill and a stream and then faces us full to the putting green, which has the Claudian ruins for a background. The play concludes with a seventeenth which has a putting green very shrewdly placed, and an eighteenth where the second shot is played through a little valley, these ending holes abounding in golfing beauty and character.
There is to be said of this course, and in the most sober and well-considered judgment by one who has seen golf in many lands, that there is scarcely an inland course anywhere that seems more naturally adapted to the game. Each hole has strong character of its own;I could remember them all after but a single round. Some time soon they will make an attempt at Acqua Santa to carry their putting greens on from one season to the next, and then they will get a thickness and trueness and quality that greens can gain in no other way. The golfers of Rome are keen, and they have energy and enterprise. A great future awaits this club and course, and I believe that when more money is spent on it, as will be soon, it will be in nearly every thinkable way the most attractive course on the Continent. The mood that gathers about one when in Rome tends to taking the game rather more seriously and thoughtfully than at the Mediterranean resorts; it becomes a real recreation, the refreshing change. The club's nearness and convenience to the city are very good. It is but a few minutes' journey by either train or tram from the heart of Rome to the club-house, near which there is a special golfers' railway station.
A Franciscan friar was the first to point out to me the situation of the nine holes of Florence—nine plain fair holes, though they have nothing of architectural beauty in them, not a trace of feeling, nothing of the mediaeval glow of spirit that separates this city from all others in the world, hardly a touch of imagination in their two or three thousand yards. Yet they serve their modern purpose well. For six days and six nights the rain had poured down upon the dripping Firenze from inexhaustible clouds; the saucer in which the city is laid emptied its floods into the Arno until, dirtier and more turbulent than usual, the big stream tumbled itself violently through the bridges. We wandered through the Uffizi Galleries and the Pitti Palace and the Bargello of courtyard fame. There is nothing inthe world like sweet Florence, and it is a hopeless soul that feels no spark of artistic fire crackle for at least one inspiring moment when the glories of this city that was born and lived to the human expression of beauty are contemplated. But an incessant rain provokes a bold defiance; there almost seemed to be a weakness in such constant shelter, and I remembered a suggestion that was sent to me from a far distance—"Go up to Fiesole if you can." So in the car I went to Fiesole. We went out of the town and by San Gervasio, and wound past San Domenico, and twisted our way up the hill until, with five miles done, or it may have been a little more, the old Etruscan town, with the fragment of an ancient wall, was reached. At the very summit, where once a Roman castle stood, there is the Franciscan monastery. A brother in his umbrian gown looked meditatively outwards from the porch, and he was gracious and friendly when I told him I would like to go inside. From a loggia within we looked out upon one of the finest panoramic views of its kind. The rain had ceased. Grass was seen upon the Etruscan hills, tentacles of the Apennines came clear again through dissolving mists, and a golden light flamed up in the western sky. And in its peaceful hollow there lay Florence, the palace of art, a mediaeval jewel glistening there like a mosaic in white and terra cotta, with its great duomo in many-coloured marbles lording it over the lowlier piles. Florence! Sweeping the valley with a glance, the monk turned towards the north-east and, leaning upon a wall, he pointed with his right hand and said, "Pisa!" Over there was the city of the leaning tower and the baptistery with the amazing echo. But in the nearer distance there was a square patch of vivid green, and I traced its situation along there by the course of the Arno, by the Cascine, and other landmarks, and made nearly sure of what it was. The thoughtwas incongruous at the time, nearly inexcusable, but yet there is little in golf that is vulgar after all, and it could not be denied that there was the golf course out that way. By some careful questions I gained confirmation from the friar. I told him I looked for a place, a special place, whose locality I described precisely. And he held out his hand again. The golf course was nearly in the line of Pisa.
While so many things in Florence are four or five hundred years old at least, the golf course is only fifteen. Still, fifteen years makes a good maturity in these times, and Italy, if its courses are few, has some distinctions among them. Many continental courses depend for their attraction on their setting. Those of Florence and Rome have the most perfect setting conceivable, but while the course of Rome could live on its merits had there been no Rome, the course of Florence never could. Yet the city helps it out, and, though poor be the holes, here we have indeed one of the most enthusiastic little golf communities one might ever wish to mix among. The club is captained by Mr. J. W. Spalding, head of the great athletic business firm, who has ceased to live in America and lives now wholly in Florence, which he would hardly do were it not for this golf course, on which he plays nearly every day. Mr. Spalding is a fine example of the keen and determined golfer. A few years ago, in a terrible motor-car smash in Italy, he lost completely the sight of one eye. As soon as the surgeons and the doctors let him loose again he hurried to his favourite course at Florence and—think of it!—at once he won the scratch gold medal. He is a scratch man now, and plays as well as ever.
These and many other things I learned on the day after the monk had pointed out to me the direction of the nine holes of Florence, when I went along to San Donato to make a closer view of them, to drive andputt at them. The golfers of Florence are a good company, managed with zeal by Signor Mavrogordato, in the capacity of honorary secretary. They are as keen and interested in their game as if they were at Sandwich, and they have a miniature club-house situated on a spot of land that has a cemented water-filled moat all round it, those who would enter having to pass over a little rustic bridge. The holes are plain with artificial cross bunkers, and the architecture is of what might be called the low Victorian school. One of the features of the course is a couple of tall trees that stand up in the middle with thin straight trunks parallel to each other, looking for all the world like Rugby football goal-posts. One great advantage that this course has is that it is splendidly convenient to the city. Take a tram-car No. 17 labelled "Cascine" from one particular corner of the cathedral square, say "Golf" to the conductor, pay him a penny for the fare, and the rest is inevitable. In a quarter of an hour you will be deposited at a junction in the roads by the barrier of Ponte alle Mosse, and two minutes' walk from there takes you to the iron gates which give admission to the course.
There is the beautiful bay at Naples, and Pompeii, and a short voyage on the steamboat to the sweet isle of Capri; but golf has not yet come to Naples, though it will do so soon. When we travelled down there from Rome we were aboard a train that was taken by many of the Naples members of the Italian Parliament who were going home for the week-end—the "deputies' train" they often call that six o'clock from Rome. They had been having a fearful week of it, wrangling about their recent Libyan war and the cost of it, and their nerves were in rather a jagged state. I fell into conversationwith one of them, and he said that he wished he were a golfer, as from all that he had heard and understood it was the real and only thing for the soothing of a deputy after such scrimmaging and scratching as they had been having in the Chamber that weary week. He asked questions about our Parliamentary golfers, and was informed about Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and all the others. I told this honourable member for Naples that nearly all our Parliamentarians played the greatest game of all, and that the Mother of Parliaments was all the better for it. He was impressed. He said there should be golf at Naples by the time I went there again—even if it was set there for the benefit of the tired members only!
Above all things, Venice is a place for reflection, and when we are there we think of all things we have seen and done in Italy, and shape exactly the impressions that have been made. One time there were two or three of us in a gondola. The crescent of a seven days' moon hung among the stars in the Venetian night. The gentle regular plash that was made by Giovanni Cerchieri, our gondolier (and be it said that his gondola is the blackest and smartest and most finely dignified of all that glide on the Grand Canal), as he swung backwards and forwards to his work behind us, with a sigh or a murmur that might have swollen to a real boat-song had we encouraged it, was nearly the only sound on the still waters. And in this Venetian night, an hour after the coffee, we were in the mood of men who feel that they are soon to return to the cold hard facts of life. The rest of Venice might go to glory; we, soothed amid such ease and comfort as might have satisfied a doge, turned our thoughts to the links of home. There was nothing incongruous in the association of ideas and facts. Venice we found to be splendid for meditation, and any place with such a quality, like the top of a mountain,or the side of a purling stream, is a fine one for golfing consideration and conjecture. One man would talk of art, of pictures, and of sculpture; another would stupidly keep to golf. And then a compromise was suggested, when it was said that a question had once been asked as to whether there was such a thing as style in golf!
Any thoughtful player who ever had any doubt upon this matter—but, of course, no thoughtful player ever could—would have it dispelled if he went to Italy even though he never played a game, did not take his clubs, and never saw a golf course there. It were indeed better for his education in this matter that he should not play when on Italian ground, for one would not expect to find on the courses there the best examples of golfing style. The fact of style in golf would come home to him when he wandered through the galleries and looked upon all the magnificent sculptures that are among the matchless treasures of the country, though there is no study of a golfing swing among them. I do not see how any player of the game who is thoughtful and contemplative can go to Italy and fail to be enormously impressed with the lessons that are silently delivered from the sculpture in the galleries and museums of Rome, Florence, and other cities. In hundreds of pieces here we see the suggestion of beauty put forward in every movement and exercise of the human body, and particularly when the frame is being brought to some considerable physical effort, when the limbs are being placed upon the strain, are grace and rhythm and style exhibited to us, and with them there is the suggestion always of the extreme of power. There is indicated the close relationship between exact and graceful poise, perfect balance, and supreme controlled and concentrated force. The very utmost efficiency is always suggested in all this artistic balance. As the art is better and moreappealing, so the suggestion of power is increased and the marble almost seems to break with life.
Considered in this way, what a fine thing is the "David" of Bernini in the Borghese Gallery! But for our golfing suggestion some of the discobolus models serve us better. Without ever having attempted to throw a discus, one may very well understand that success at such an exercise depends almost wholly upon perfect balance and accurate concentration of force and true rhythmical movement, and in the models in the Vatican and the National Museums in Rome and elsewhere we see how it might be done. The discobolus of Myron, reconstructed as it has been, and with the head made to face in the wrong direction, so they say, is a magnificent thing. In the National Gallery of Rome they have made a reconstruction from a fragment of another, and they have made the figure to look sideways and half upwards to the discus held at arm's length behind him ready for the throw, whereas in the Myron the face is to the front and the eyes are down. (Though one may know nothing at all about the ways in which the discs were really thrown, or what is the best way to throw them, one is hardly convinced of the desirability of disturbing the head in the back-swing of the arm and letting the eyes follow the object in the hand. Surely concentration would be impeded and balance suffer.) But in these images we see the intensity of the relation between style and power, and we realise that if there were no style in golf there ought to be, and the next moment, that of all modern games golf is a game of style and nothing else. Perhaps you may play it without style, but then it is not the same thing, and it can never be so thoroughly effective and precise. Unconsciously, perhaps, James Braid had style in his mind when he said that at the top of the swing the golfer should feel like a spring coiledup to its fullest tension, straining for the release. That is just what the discobolus suggests, and the golfer gets the fullest enjoyment from the game, the supreme physical thrills, when he feels this high tension for a moment and then its even, smooth, and quick escape, and he cannot feel it so when he has no style and all his movements and positions have not been made in perfect harmony. Some may say that the actions of the discobolus were probably not so very fine as the sculptors have made them out to be, and that much of the shape is merely artist's fancy, but probably they are fairly true to life. If they are not, one cannot contemplate them for more than a few moments without feeling that life ought to be true to them. The golfer in the suggestion of grace and power, as in the models that have been cut of Harry Vardon at the top and end of his driving swing, reaches some way towards the discobolus.
"When we were in Madrid——" I have sometimes begun in conversation, and then invariably from one or more in the company there has been a quick interruption with—"But there can be no golf in Madrid! You do not go to Spain for golf!" But one who knows may answer that there is as good reason to go there for it as to most other places out of Britain, that in different parts of Spain there is fair golf to be had, that in Madrid there is a new course which is excellent and embraces some of the prettiest holes we would ever wish to play after passing by the Pyrenees, and that I have found there Spanish gentlemen to play with who have been among the happiest and most agreeable companions and opponents I have encountered. In a reflection upon my own experiences I dare to say that I would recommend a doubtful stranger to go to Spain only if he is a golfer, for by the agency of the game will the life and facts of the country be best presented to him, and mysteries be explained. The magic passport of golf is indispensable in all such circumstances. The truth is that it was golf that led me to Spain on my second visit to the country, and I had then one of the most interesting andinstructive holidays I have had in my travelling life, during which I had the opportunity of seeing something of the inside of Spanish life and government, of discovering truth about the forces that work in the regeneration of this old country, for really an awakening is taking place, and one dares to say the firm establishment of golf is a symbol of it. I had some interesting conversations with the Count Romanones, who was then the Prime Minister, with his brother, who is the Duke of Tovar, a man of broad sympathies who takes a leading part in many social movements of high importance in Madrid, and with other persons of much importance. These talks, with the open sight of all that was passing in Madrid, made a deep impression.
"You are a golfer, and we of Spain may give you some good golf to play!" said the Prime Minister cordially when by invitation I called upon him at his palace in the Paseo de la Castellana. He is a man of forcible appearance and manner. The face is thin, and its lines of character are strong—cold and strong. The aquiline features have something of Spanish—no Italian—fierceness about them, and the Count makes a piercing look which is considered discomforting to nervous strangers. But he is a very attractive companion in talk; his verve, his vivacity are wonderful. When discussing a subject in which he is interested his whole being becomes aflame; eyes sparkle and features quiver; he beats his fingers in the palms of his hands; he leans over towards you and gesticulates like an artist in enthusiasm. A man of hot nervous energy, one of keen purpose and determination is this statesman of Spain. He suggested that the new sports of his country were symbolic of her great awakening, of which he said he would talk to me that I might tell others what Spain is now and what she would be. "Europe does notunderstand my country," he remarked, "True, there has been little occasion to understand her. But a change occurs. Spain at this moment is passing through a most remarkable process of transition. You are right in a suggestion you have made to me; unsuccessful wars do not cause interminable loss and disasters. The war with the United States was not all bad for Spain. We may have lost Cuba, but the development that has taken place since then in our country at home, in its agriculture and its mining, and again in its healthy natural feeling, has been enormous, and is a good substitute for many islands." And then he went on in a deeply interesting conversation to tell me of the great awakening of Spain indicated in many different ways, and of all her political, social, and other ambitions.
The Duke of Tovar, who is also coming to take an interest in the golf of Spain, smoked his cigar on a divan in his palace, and a Moorish boy brought coffee to us. The Duke travels much, and brings things and people back with him. I see that he has been an ambassador-extraordinary to the Pope of Rome and has received the most gracious papal thanks. A little of a statesman, he is much of an artist, and a marble bust of Alfonsorex, his own sculpture, casts a shadow beside us. In innumerable ways this Spanish nobleman associates himself with the life of the people, goes among them, attends their meetings, and he began telling me that one of the secrets of the new Spain was the important fact of the nobles taking to business, becoming the promoters and managers of industrial companies, as they were. He told me of dukes who were doing things. One of the new movements, in which he has assisted to his utmost and thoroughly believes in, is the boy scout movement, which has caught on like wildfire in Madrid. Three thousand Spanish boys were enrolled within a few weeks of theestablishment of the system in the city, and the Duke became a president of a section. All class distinctions are avoided in this matter. "My son is going with the son of the porter," said the Duke of Tovar. And he most certainly believed in golf for the people, and would tell me stories of its beginning and its development.
As to Madrid, never was such a quick transformation accomplished in any city of the world, save when 'Frisco perished and was made again, as is being done here in the city on the plateau of Castile. The Spaniards having decided on the regeneration of their country and on persuading foreigners to come to it, have determined they must have a capital befitting a first-class power. The result is that Madrid is being torn to pieces and rebuilt. Everywhere there is a fever of building raging. Think of it: but three years ago and there was not a single first-class hotel in Madrid; now there are two fine ones. The Alcala, where the Madrileños stroll and mount up the hill to the Puerta del Sol, the great bare square where the idlers lounge, where the bull-fighting papers are sold, where there are many offices for the sale of lottery tickets, where there are cafés and yellow tramcars (run by Belgian companies, if you please!) and much life but no gaiety until very late at night, is soon to be deposed from being chief street of Madrid, for they are making a new ideal street, very wide and one mile long, which is cut straight through the heart of the city and is to be called the Gran Via when it is done. Millions and millions of pesetas' worth of property have been demolished to allow for the straightness of this street, which is to ask for comparison with a part of the Fifth Avenue across the water. Thirty-seven millions of pesetas were lately voted by the Municipal Council for the removal of the cobble stones of Madrid, their places to be taken by asphalte and wood. The cobbles ofMadrid are picturesque; they make good harmony with those antique watchmen who seem to have been reincarnated from our own eighteenth-century London, walking the slumberous streets at night, lanterns in their hands and jangling bunches of giant keys suspended from their girdles, their business being to open the outside doors of blocks of flats for late-returning occupiers who in an unthinking languorous way of Spain would carry no keys, but leave the affair of their homecoming to the fortune of the night, the vigilance of the watchman, and the blessing of Providence. But the cobbles are not convenient. They are seldom repaired, and even in such a spacious public place as the Prado, which is a kind of Hyde Park Corner, there are sometimes deep holes which fill with water when it rains and make such pools as ducks might like and dogs would drink, but which take a leg of mine some way upwards to the knee when the night is dark. There was an old Madrid of which trills of love and passion have been sung. Fevered lovers sang to ladies whose lips were red, and whose skin was dark, as their hearts were gay—voluptuous women. Guitars and flowers; blood and life. That Madrid has nearly passed away. A few steep and narrow streets and some dirty open spaces, with little of the delicate charm of age to recommend them, are most of what is left of it in a quarter near to the royal palace. The city of later times, the Madrid of to-day, is already and quickly giving way to a third Madrid which will soon be made.
In this that I have written I may seem to neglect my theme, and yet the state of Spain does most closely concern the strange case of golf in the country. Here is an answer to interrupters who are quick to say that one does not go to Madrid for golf. When Spain was all romance and colour, all dirt and laziness,it was no place for games like this. Bicycles were not popular then because they had to be pedalled ceaselessly, or the riders would fall: they, being as symbols of action, did not permit of lounging or a little slumber. In the days of the first and second Madrids, athletics could not be contemplated; the corrida was supreme and solitary for Spanish "sport." Now there is an athletic movement. There are many football clubs; there is a national cup competition and the King has given the cup. Still the corrida flourishes, but it is threatened. In the new movement for the third Madrid there are social clubs such as we have in London. There is an inclination for strong, healthy sport, and the King encourages it with all his royal might and influence. Don Alfonso has been the good leader of the royal game in Spain. The main point is that golf in these days is a token of a healthier disposition and a new progress, and it is a strong influence upon character. In the old Spain such a sport as this was quite impossible; now it grows, and, to me as one who has considered the birth and rise of golf in many countries, the case of Spain is deeply interesting. When I went there I remembered what some of the thoughtful and candid Americans had said about this game exerting a needed and subtle influence upon their own national character. It is such influences that are needed in Spain, and I shall go again among the Madrileños to see this one in the working. Already they have courses, nice and tolerable, in Barcelona, Bilbao, and many other provincial places. When I went to San Sebastian, one of the most beautiful and fully equipped seaside resorts in the whole world, the municipal authorities assured me that they felt a fear that the bull-fights were becoming a doubtful attraction to foreign visitors, and they were giving their attention to the establishment of amunicipal golf course. It will be the first municipal golf course on the continent of Europe.
Let me plunge to my revelation and state that Madrid, in New Castile, land of the toreador, country where so much of the Middle Ages does yet survive, where games till lately have been almost unknown, this Madrid comes now to be possessed of such a first-class course as might be the envy of many a British seaside resort. While I lingered in the city Señor Fabricio de Potestad, one of the most active members of the general committee of the Madrid Golf Club, and of its green committee too, was a kind counsellor and guide. Just as might happen at home, while at breakfast at the Ritz there came to me notice that the car was waiting. Señor de Potestad, his clubs and mine inside the car, had the golfer's expectancy upon a genial Spanish countenance, rubbed hands, and declared it was a fine day for the game. We sped away from the Prado, and considered handicaps and odds as golfers must. But first we went for object lessons in the progress of Spanish golf. Three or four miles out we reached the hippodrome where some nine years back the game was born. Don Alfonso had been learning golf in England; he had striven with it in a left-handed way while he wooed a British princess in the Isle of Wight, and he gave a Spanish decoration then to the professional who showed him how to hold his hands and where to put his feet. Then nine simple stupid little holes were laid out in this hippodrome, and there they still remain as relics of the earliest age in the golf history of this country, the uncultured time when the ball was missed, the days when a hole in nine might have been considered good and aseven enough to make the soul of a great grandee quiver with a new found joy. Three Spaniards stood forward with the King as the pioneers of Spanish golf, and still they are among its leaders. There was a great sportsman, the Duke of Alva, president of the club; there was the Marquis de Santa Cruz, and there was the Señor Pedro Caro, perhaps the only Spanish golfer of early times besides Don Alfonso himself who learned his strokes and swings in England, where he was schooled, and who with the Count de la Cimera and the Count Cuevas de Vera, cousin of my guide, is one of the three best players of Spain. Two of them are Spanish scratch, and the Count de la Cimera lately achieved the distinction of being the first of his land to rise to the eminence of plus one. Thus you may perceive that the golf of Spain is helped by the best people, and that is not because it is fashionable, and it is not only because the King has shown a liking for it, but because the Spaniards have found in it a quick fascination, an awakening pastime, such a strong diversion from the often heavy life of their country as they had not imagined. Had you seen, as I did, the Duke of Aliaga bunkered one afternoon before a high steep cliff in front of the eighteenth green on the second oldest course of Madrid; had you seen him pensive as he felt the extraneous sorrows of a Spanish nobleman of riches and high station; had you seen the gleam of gladness in two Spanish eyes when the ball was heaved somehow to the top in one (the gods may know how he managed it; but we said to him that it was a splendid shot, and I do believe it was!) you would not doubt that golf was meant for Spain as these people declare it was—"the thing of all others that we needed," so they say.
This second oldest course, the "old course" as they begin to call it now, marks the transition period ofSpanish golf. It is not the primeval course of the hippodrome, but one which was made in 1907 at a place apart and a little farther along the road. The land is worth a million and three-quarters of pesetas now when Madrid has become so much bigger than it was, and the course falls within the city zone; and as the players became educated they yearned for something better, and they moved again. But fond memories will cling for long enough to this old course of Spain; with a little help from fancy one may look upon it even now as a kind of old Blackheath of Spanish golf. There is a small club-house with dining-room, dressing-rooms and all complete, in quite the English way, on a spot of rising ground, and from the verandah we may look over a part of the course, with a short hole to begin with and some curious bunkering here and there, with a highly modern attempt to adopt the system of humps-and-hollows bunkering that has been so well established on inland courses at home. Somehow one gathers the impression that the Spaniards have been striving all the time towards some kind of indistinct ideal, realising that the sport they had discovered was a great one and trying to improve their practice of it. And I recall that it was J. H. Taylor, the old designer, the old constructor, the quintuple champion, who was pioneer in the planning of courses in Madrid, and he laid out this one of eighteen holes very well for the early Spanish golfers.
One of the curiosities of the course is the putting green at the eleventh hole, which is quite round and is surrounded by an evenly shaped earthen rampart. On seeing it for the first time the average Englishman observes to the Spaniard who is with him, "How like a bull-ring!" The remark is justifiable and it seems appropriate; but the Spanish gentleman has heard it many times. Playing the bull-ring hole is a satisfyingexperience, most exceedingly contenting. We play what we shall consider a perfect approach shot to our Plaza de Toros hole. The ball is pitched into the ring just over the near side of the barricade. A big bound and it is by the hole side, a smaller skip and it is away to the other side of the circle, and then there is one nervous little jump up towards that enclosing height. The perplexed ball seems in our fancy to claw up the steep slope, which is about four or five feet high; it nearly reaches the top. We, the player, feel a little pitter-patter in the heart. Is that little white bull of a ball of ours going to get over the fence and spoil the thing? It should not; we pitched him as nicely as human skill could ever pitch. He is vicious; but he is spent. The gay life which he had at the beginning of the stroke is flickering out. He cannot escape. Our cuadrilla of one, the little Spanish lad with the bag of clubs, advances and hands the putter, taking back the mashie which has done its business. The ball comes trickling back from the bank—back and back, and it comes on to within some seven or eight feet of the side of the hole. Then it falters and stops, done for. Meanwhile there is another white bull of a ball only four feet away; this also had come back from the bank, but a little more. I, as an espada, take my steel putter for the finishing touch. I see the line, I have the momentary hesitation, the nerves are tightened, and then I make the stroke, and happily it is a good one. The ball has gone down. In truth both balls go down, and "Four, señor!" and "Four—a half,amigo!" and the play to the eleventh hole of old Madrid is done. Even if there is a slope to the hole and there is the bull-ring rampart round it, we say that a four at this piece of golf is good. We also argue out that bull-ring with our consciences. I have seen nothing like it. It was clearly the object ofthose who made it to pen the ball up towards the hole, to make the golf a little easier, for it was found to be hard enough (as you and I have found it hard enough at home) to catch the ball and keep it and lead it to its hole. This hole, the rampart, seems to be a concession to the frail humanity of man. Conscience murmurs chidingly, "You know, you English golfer, that you should never have been so near to that Spanish pin! You should have been bunkered, my friend, perhaps badly bunkered, beyond the green!" But being in Spain, and doing as Spaniards do, we are a little independent, have a freedom of idea, and with some peevishness of manner, an arrogance, a way as of telling conscience to attend its other business and get back to London—where in some places they do place bunkers and hills upon the greens to keep the golfer, as it seems, from holing out at all—I retort, "I played a good shot anyhow; I only just pitched over the bull-ring fence; I pitched the ball up high and let it drop straight down, and cut every leg from it that it ever had. No man could do better with the ground so hard. It was right that the ball should come back."
I shall hope that with their attachment to a new love that is so beautiful and good, the Spaniards will not give up their old course here that has served them faithfully and brought on their game. Besides, it is a course that is pretty in its situation. Away beyond, many miles away, are those snow-topped Guadarrama Mountains, fine rough things. Though it was March, and untruths are told about the wickedness of the Spanish climate, we lunched with Señora Elena de Potestad in the open outside the club-house in warm sunshine glistening on a pretty scene. Señora Elena is quite the best lady golfer of Spain; but writing the truth as she told it, the charming wife of my friend is not Spanish, but is a Russian lady from Khieff. Isuspect her of being the best Russian lady golfer and the best Spanish too; it is curious. She has done the first nine holes here at Madrid in something less than bogey. Next to her on the championship list is the Marquesa de Alamoncid de los Oteros, six strokes behind. Queen Victoria sometimes plays, and I have seen that extremely popular lady of Spain, the Infanta Isabella, golfing here with the professional and a maid of honour. The game is doing well with the ladies of the peninsula; they like it. I had a gentle argument with the Señora Elena, who seemed a little doubtful whether golf were quite a ladies' game, for all her own skill and love for it. She pleaded the other feminine occupations and interests, even the distractions, and the difficulty of surrendering to the tyranny of golf. In her view it seemed to be of the ladies' life a thing apart, while we have known it to be a man's complete existence.
As our speedy car skimmed the road on the way back to Madrid that night, Señor Fabricio would talk of the good influence of the game, and the special benefits that it might and did confer upon his hopeful countrymen. "Twelve years ago," he reflected, "I might meet all my friends at the corrida. All were for the bull fight—and the ladies too. But now—if I went myself, as I do not—I should see none. They are all for golf. At my club in Madrid we say one to another about the time of lunch, 'Do you go to golf this afternoon?' It used to be, 'I suppose you go to the corrida, eh?'" One thinks and wonders.
I took tea in the lounge at the Ritz, and gossiped with a man who had just come along from Portugal and told me of some exciting times they had been having there. They had decided on having more golf, and were about to make a municipal matter of it near Lisbon. Hitherto, as I knew, they had had only onegolf course in the whole country, and that was at a place called Espinho, some eleven miles out from Oporto, and it was said that bulls intended for the fights were fed up there and did their roaming exercise on this course. It is not a comfortable idea. The new course is out at Belem on the banks of the Tagus near to Lisbon, and this is the exact place at which Vasco de Gama landed on returning from his greatest voyage of discovery. It is an eighteen-holes course; it has been well planned; and much money is being spent on it. The Portuguese having started a new form of government and begun a new national life—as they hope—have come quickly to the conclusion that they need golf and much of it, for already a second course for Lisbon is being arranged, and there are to be others in different parts of the country. If King Manoel goes back, he will be prepared for them, for he has cultivated a fair game at Richmond.
In the evening we went to stroll among the cafés of Madrid, and presently peered into the old parts of the city, where life is simple and strong, where the humbler Madrileños resort, and there are dancing entertainments of a strange kind. On a little stage there is some jingling music worked out from a bad piano, and a troupe of girls with some gypsies among them will make a dance that, for all its art and all its naïveté, is somewhat coarse. Other girls will sit round them in a semicircle and keep up a kind of barbarous wail, occasionally bursting into a mock shout of approval. A song will follow, and a chorus with it, and by and by the entertainers will descend and drink wine with the people in the café, and all this will continue until the night is very late. But out in the Puerta del Sol the lights are bright and there is moregaiety than there has ever been. So we wandering golfers, reckless of the game of the day that follows (after all we are to give a bagful of strokes to these Spaniards and can beat them yet—but not always, one remembers), turn in to one of the music halls which have three shows a night, the third beginning at midnight, and we see La Argentinita dance, see the rumba done. Then down the Alcala and over the Prado home. We shall insist that this is a part of our golf in old Madrid; it is not the conventional golfing holiday, as I try to show. Another day we will run out for many miles to El Escorial (thanking the Duke of Tovar for the offer of his car) and ruminate in this most sombre architectural creation of the great Philip—palace, monastery and tomb in one—and another day out to Toledo, a grand dead city of a long past of many phases and eras, a mummified city it seems to be, with halls and places that look sometimes as if they had but just been left by the rich grand caballeros of the time when Spain was great. You can nearly see their ghosts, gay in satins and crimson silks, leaning over flowered balconies, singing, kissing, laughing, and always living.
I dislike the corrida. It is horrible. Its time has gone. I had enough of it once when south at Algeciras. But a Spanish golfing companion said that it was a very special day, and for the experience, and as a matter of being guest, I should go. There were eight bulls done instead of six, and horses in proportion, and a county councillor of Madrid took us behind all the scenes, into the hospital, into the matador's chapel, and explained everything. He was a courteous gentleman. He said they would have golf in Madrid, that the corrida would leave in time, but for the present the people must have the corrida. It takes time to make great changes, he said, even in Madrid—where it doestake more time for movements than anywhere else. But the point of this reference is the harsh contrast that is indicated—our peaceful game of golf in which nothing is killed, no blood spilled, nobody hurt, and yet, as we think, the greatest, fullest sport of all, stirring the emotions better than any corrida in Madrid or Barcelona, and this awful feast of blood and death. I have seen golf in many places, but never in one where its setting seemed so utterly impossible as here. And yet golf in Madrid is strengthening, and by ever so little the corrida, so they tell me, is weakening. That the game can begin and can hold and grow in such a place is surely the utmost testimony of its power. Games like golf have some work to do in Spain. It is because of such considerations, because of the extraordinary environment in which this peaceful, excellent sport is set, that I have found golf in Madrid such a remarkable and interesting study, and have dwelt upon it and provoked the contrasts when I might.
See contrast now again, yet more wonderful. The next morning broke bright and blue, and Señor Fabricio was round betimes in the Prado with his car. We were to go to the new course that day. We sped away on the Corunna road for some four or five miles from Madrid, and then turned up towards the higher land. All this was King's land; El Pardo it is called. Here is the new golf course of Madrid, which takes the place in the Spanish golfers' hearts and plans of the other one of which I have already written, that with the bull-ring hole. This of El Pardo is part of a great new sporting establishment, embracing a magnificent polo ground, tennis courts, and all the advantages and appurtenances of a thorough country club in the manner of those which began in America and have since been copied in England, and more recently at Saint-Cloud near Paris.
Considered in some ways 1 am a little disposed to count this new golf course of Madrid as the eighth or ninth wonder of the whole golfing world, just as the Spaniards themselves set up a claim for El Escorial to be ranked as the eighth of the world at large. There are sound reasons for the nomination. I have shown that it might well have been held that the Spanish people's character and dispositions were a soil in which no good game might grow, and yet that it was being urged and proved that there was a great process of regeneration going on and that golf indeed had been given a very good start. Now we come to the astonishing climax for the time being in this little story of contrasts. Here, if you please, at El Pardo on the estates of Don Alfonso is just one of the nicest, best, and most interesting courses for golf on which the excellent game might ever be played. It is quite new and it is most thoroughly up to date. It is a course of which good clubs in Britain might be exceedingly proud. You and I would be glad to play there nearly always, and we should have little fault to find. When I was there it was only just being finished. Its history is a nice romance. The golfers of Spain had risen to that state when they felt they needed something better for the improvement and the enjoyment of their play than the rough primitive course with the bull-ring hole which had ceased to satisfy their needs and tastes. They were restive. Came Don Alfonso to their comfort and their happiness. At El Pardo was the ideal golfing land—wide undulating sweeps of lovely country, majestic undulations, grand environment, with the splendid Guadarramas in full view. It was a scene sublime. The land was wooded, trees would have to be felled, the ploughshare would have heavy work to do; but that is how courses are made to-day. Not in Don Alfonso's power was it to give the groundoutright, but he passed it to the golfers for a nominal rent of a thousand pesetas a year, which, being converted to English reckoning, would be some £37. There was land for the polo and the tennis hard by. Estimates were procured, and it was discovered that to do the work of felling and ploughing, sowing and construction, building and finishing, a sum of just about twenty-two thousand pounds in English money would be needed, and most of the money would go to England too. Then with zest the golfers and other sportsmen of Madrid came forward, each one subscribed according to his means and ability, and in a very little while all that great fund of money was obtained, and it was in the bank before the work was started. That was a splendid achievement; the golf of Madrid deserves to prosper now.
It was determined that with such a beginning everything should be done most thoroughly afterwards. Thousands of trees had to be cut down, the ground cleared, ploughed, and raked, and the putting greens sown. On hardly any course in any country has the work of construction been done more thoroughly. Then Mr. Harry Colt was brought from England to design the holes, and he gave of some of his most cunning, most artistic work, having a fine field for his quick imagination. The result is eighteen holes as good and rich as Spanish holes need be. Some of the short ones are as good short holes as I have seen. One with the green on a hog's back, the seventh, is a most appetising thing. At the third there is a quick slope on the left of the green and the approach is one of those twisty things that are a strong feature of the Coltian style of architecture, demanding a skill and calculation from the player that many bunkers would not exact. There is a dog-leg hole for the fifth that leads to a green partly framed in a corner of trees.Parts of Spain are treeless, the great plain above which Madrid is placed, the long lone sweep of land that you look down upon from the palace, down to the Manzanares and beyond to a far horizon, is one of the most desolate countries that my eyes have seen. But here at El Pardo there are trees enough. Chestnuts and cork are everywhere, and the course has a look of our sweet Sunningdale at home. Harrows, rakes, and spades have done their work most wondrous well, and the nicest gradients have been given to the putting greens. But there is something even more remarkable still that has been done. Make it as you would, tend it as you might, but if Nature were to be depended upon the loveliest course in all Spain would have to perish, for the climate forbids. So the climate had to be foiled. Water was needed, water everywhere, water always, always. The Madrid golfers, wise beyond all British example, determined they would have their water at the very beginning of things. Some way distant there was a river or canal, and it was tapped for their supply. Great cemented aqueducts were built to carry it across valleys; it was piped through hills. The water in abundance was brought up here to the course; and it was laid on to every teeing ground and putting green and to the entire fairway so that everywhere, always, the water should be poured on, the fine grass that grows should be kept always green, and the turf, which is of full sandy kind, should be always golf-like and moist. That was a splendid achievement. I enjoyed the round of the new course, delighted in a pretty valley hole towards the end, and admired the enterprise of the Spanish golfers exceedingly. They have golf in Madrid. As the express climbed with me upwards back to France I reflected again on these wild contrasts, and the struggle for light by Spain.
As a pursuit golf differs from all others in that there is no exclusively right way and no utterly wrong way of doing anything connected with it. Those engaged with it are constantly, to use their own expression, finding out what they are "doing wrong," and then with great eagerness and activity and newly revived hope are setting forth to repair their errors and place their game upon a new foundation. Yet despite this eternal discovery of faults and remedies, only a little is ever found out of the full truth that is hidden somewhere, by even the very best of players, and herein lies the consolation of the humbler people in that, if they know little, their superiors, being champions, know only a little more compared with all that there is to be known. Thus upon every disappointment an encouragement ensues. If these points are considered it will appear that there are deep truths in them, while at the same time they convey morals and point the way to a betterment of one's game. And the most important point is that there is no one exclusively correct way of doing anything, and this, with all the circumstances surrounding the proposition, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that this is no game for narrow-minded and conventional people, who would always do as others do, and have not the will to exercise their own convictions which, along with their admiration for some of the tenets of the political party to which they do not belong, are stifled in their consciences and put away. Golf is indeed a game for extensive individualism, for the free exercise of convictions and for continual groping along unknown channels of investigation in search of the truth. Those who do not investigate and explore in this way miss a full three-fourths of the intellectual joyof this pastime. And the investigators must have the courage to reject things of information that are offered to them, even when conveyed with the very highest testimonials for their efficacy from the best champions of home and foreign countries, while at the same time they should have the will to put into exercise even the most fantastic scheme of their own imagination.
All dogmatic teaching in golf is wrong. There are two or three essential principles as we have called them—the keeping of the still head, the fixed centre in the body, the eye on the ball, and such like—which must be obeyed under the certain penalty of failure, because these might be said to be the laws of Nature as applied to golf, and have nothing to do with the eccentricities of human method. But, these being properly respected, there are innumerable ways of building upon them structures of golf which, in the goodness of results in the matter of getting threes and fours and winning the holes, are much the same at the finish. One of the structures may be precise, another may be plain, a third may be ornate, and a fourth may be rough and vulgar. Yet in efficiency and in results they may be just the same, and in most cases the man is led to his style of golf building largely by his own temperamental case. So long as the essential principles are observed in each case, being the same always but kept hidden in the recesses of the building, many things may be done that the books do not teach. The books are valuable to the utmost for their suggestions and for bringing the player back to his base, as it were, when he has wandered too far in his explorations, piled theory on theory and got his game into the most hopeless tangle. For corrective purposes they are in this way quite essential. They stand for the conventions and for the middle ways; they enable us to make a fresh start. And the golfer is always making fresh starts. What is the cherishedbelief of to-day is abandoned next week, the discovery just made and looked upon as solving the last problem that keeps the handicap man away from scratch, is found later to be a temporary convenience only and to be dependent on something else in the system of a highly fleeting and uncertain kind. These beginnings, this starting over again with increased hope, add always to the pleasure.
What players need to remember above all things is that the games of no two men are quite alike, any more than the men themselves are quite alike, and that among the very best the widest dissimilarities exist, that the best game that any man can possibly play is not one copied from others, but that game which is his very own, the one built up on his physical, intellectual, and mental peculiarities. Every man has a game of his own somewhere which is quite different from any other, and that game, when he can play it, will be more effective than any other that he could play. What he has to do, therefore, is to find out that game in all its peculiarities, and this is what the explorer and investigator is constantly trying to achieve. He is finding out the mysteries not of the game in general, as he sometimes imagines, but of his own game, and the more he discovers the better is he as a golfer. Surely there is proof enough of the absolute soundness of this proposition in the fact that the discoveries as they are made, meaning not those which are found later to be worthless, but those which become established in the permanent system and are invaluable, are often absolutely opposite to those made in another case and which become permanent in the same way. Why, even the champions differ more widely than any others—yet one remembers that this should not be a matter of surprise, but something that by this argument is quite inevitable. The champions have been marvellously successful in the mining of theirown golfing seams, and that is the chief reason why they are champions. And all this helps to make golf the game it is—the eternal finding out, the progress, with its occasional set-backs, towards the discovery, the completion of the golfing self. I have only met one man in my life who has golfed and never found anything out, and that was Mr. John Burns, the Minister of State, who assured me that once in the old days of the Tooting Bec course he was persuaded by a number of political persons to go with them to play the game there one day. He had never handled a golf club in his life, but having some practical knowledge of cricket, felt that golf could not offer any serious hindrance to him. Consequently he agreed to take his part in a foursome, and in the progress of this match usually drove the best ball, with the result that his side was well victorious. There seemed nothing in his game that needed improvement. Herein we observe Mr. Burns displayed many of the qualities of the highest statesmanship, but he rose majestically in his determination that from that day he would never play golf again, much as he liked it, and he never has. He has these three distinctions—that he has played golf once and once only in his life; that being a golfer, as all are who are once initiated, he has never lost a match; and that he has never found anything out. I shall hope to be present at the second game he plays, the resolution having broken down, and then we shall see discoveries made.
But once again, "Golfer, know thyself" is the supreme moral drawn from the experiences of the players who have golfed and studied most. Every golfer worth the name has found out hundreds of things and hopes to find many more; some of them are quite different from any of the other things that have been found out; he has his own private collection, and in it almost any person might find something thatmight with a little alteration be added to his own. So I remember that when we came up out of Spain, where the golfers are in that happy state that they have at this present stage almost more to discover than any other golfers in the world, a new spring season was beginning in the homeland of the game and all players were looking over their stock of knowledge and seeing what they had found out in the most recent times. It occurred to me then to send out a demand to a number of good players whom I knew for their enthusiasm, for their individualism and their strength of mind, and for their conscientious investigations, and ask them what they had lately discovered in an original kind of way which had beyond question materially improved their game. The answers were enlightening, and some of them, which I may quote, are worth pondering upon. One of the best players of my acquaintance sent to say that he had made a discovery, which, applied as a resolution, had done him more good than any other half-dozen he had ever thought of. The essence of the new idea was that on the teeing ground especially, and when approaching his ball through the green, he would see to it that the stepping of the feet, the movements of the arms, hands—everything involving action—should be as slow and deliberate as possible, even the very speech itself, for the reason that this slow sureness created an irresistible tendency in the golfing action that was to follow, the back-swing was then slow and deliberate, and the whole movement was harmonious and precise. The probable value of this idea is suggested by the fact that the man who is slow and deliberate in his waggling—not meaning one who prolongs it unduly or does it in a hesitating way—generally does his swinging better. Another player said the best discovery he had ever made was the idea of imagining his weight during upswinging to be onhis left foot without really throwing it there, at the same time holding his legs a little more stiffly than had been his wont and keeping his heels on the ground as long as he could. By these things, which could all be grasped in the one general idea of making himself conscious of his legs all the time, he has come by a firmness and steadiness of system that have added enormously to his driving capacity; in fact, it has converted him from being a man who could not drive at all to a very good driver indeed.
I remember that once I was watching Taylor teaching a scratch man and giving him hints for curing some considerable cutting and slicing to which he was addicted. The champion turned round to us and said that one of them was the best tip he had ever suggested in his life. It is the simplest thing. In addressing the ball he would have the patient turn over the face of the driver until that face is positively hanging over from the top, pointing to the turf, at such a fearsome angle—no limit to it—as to make it seem impossible to do anything but smother the ball when coming down on to it. The back-swing has to be begun with the face in this threatening situation. The truth is that the nervous fear that it inspires is the secret of the success of the method. The man believes that if he comes down on to the ball like that there will be a horrible disaster, and all the time in the down-swing he is subconsciously (another to that long list of most important subconscious movements) making corrections and allowances, and his wrists are doing a twist to get the club right by the time of impact. It is this wrist action, with the left hand managing it, that is wanted, and the arm action that it induces. The club reaches the ball properly, and the ball goes off without a slice. If sometimes it is smothered it does not matter; the curewill take effect in time. But, you say, you do not want to go on for ever addressing the ball in this seemingly grotesque way. No; but, again subconsciously, when the ball is being hit and driven properly and the arm and wrist action become natural, there is a sure tendency towards a settling down to normal ways, and without the man bothering about it any more the club will gradually get itself straight.
The chief and essential difference between golf in Britain and all other places in the world, as everybody feels on coming home to it after wanderings with clubs abroad, is that here in the home of the game it is "the real thing" as nowhere else. Climate, soil, history and sentiment, and the temperament of the people have combined to make golf here a thing that foreign people who have never seen and enjoyed it cannot imagine. It is not only that its excellence is so great, but its variety so infinite; and perhaps it is because of that excellence and variety that, human nature being in such a constant state of discontent, our people in these days are so much concerned with problems of architecture and the attainment of ideals which vary much with individuals and cause incessant wrangling. It is when we are far away that we think most of the magnificence of the courses on the western seaboard of Scotland—Prestwick, Troon, and Turnberry among them, with Machrihanish and Islay in more lonesome parts—of the wealth of golf in that East Lothian district that is so amazingly crowded with fine links, of the splendid strength of such as Hoylake and others in Cheshire and Lancashire, of our own east coast with such jewels as Brancasterset in it, of that marvellous trinity of courses on the Kentish seaboard, which as a golfing land has surely not its match in the world—Sandwich, Deal, and Prince's, in the group—of Littlestone and Rye along the southern coast, and then in the west such a glorious golfing ground as Westward Ho! And there is Wales with its pretty and excellent Porthcawl, Ashburnham, and many more, and Ireland also with its great Dublin courses, Portmarnock and Dollymount, and then sweet Newcastle in county Down, and bold Portrush.
Indeed there are no others like the British courses, and it is always a tremendous speculation with any golfer of experience as to which he likes the best. When he comes to make it he has to separate in his mind the feelings of admiration and those of affection, for it commonly happens, if the judgment is reasonably good, that one may have the utmost admiration for some particular course, for its unimpeachable architecture based so well on perfect theory and the attempt always to make the punishment fit the crime and award stern justice, and yet not greatly delight to play upon it because in a way that sometimes he can hardly understand it does not give him his utmost pleasure. Here again the inexplicable emotions settle it. But in that matter of "justice" which seems so much to be the ideal of new architects, there comes the reflection in the ordinary golfer's mind sometimes as to whether golf, not really being a game of justice now, would be better if it were one, whether with so much that is unfair and tantalising removed from it the game would be half so good. Surely in no fine sport is there always exact justice done, and if it be made an ideal is it not possible that the nearer such ideal is approached the poorer may become the sport, not perhaps in regular proportion but in approximate effect? Golf is a game of Nature after all, and Nature in some ways doesnot always stick to justice. One may ponder upon what Anatole France once said about this justice. "In the vulgar sense," he wrote, "it is the most melancholy of virtues. Nobody desires it. Faith opposes it by grace and Nature by love. It is enough for a man to call himself just for him to inspire a genuine repulsion. Justice is held in horror by things animate and inanimate. In the social order it is only a machine, indispensable doubtless, and for that reason respectable, but beyond question cruel since it has no other function than to punish, and because it sets jailers and executioners at work." And perhaps it may be said that golf has little enough in principle to do with justice either; and we have seen into what perplexities the good authorities of St. Andrews have fallen by their vain endeavour to make a code of laws that would settle the just dues of every golfer in every circumstance. Nature in her variety has contrived to beat them all continually. Perhaps it may be the same with the construction of courses, but the end of all golfers' endeavour, however much it may be criticised, is the good of the game, and it is generally achieved.
Those who in the most dispassionate frame of mind have considered carefully all the points that should count the most and detached themselves as well as they might from their private and inexplicable preference have generally come to the conclusion that there are three courses in this great golfing country of ours that are somewhat better than all the rest in their golfing quality. One of them is old St. Andrews, another of them is middle-aged Westward Ho! and the third is the youthful Prince's at Sandwich. Considered as the perfect course, weighing point against point, a jury of the best critics might have difficulty in coming to anyother decision than that architecturally, for the real magnificence of its golfing value, the great creation of Mr. Mallaby-Deeley on the golfing land by Pegwell Bay is supreme. Here ten years ago there was nothing but a barren waste of sandhills, just as they had been, as it seemed, since the very beginning of things—lonesome, useless, forgotten. Then it was realised that what was good for nothing else was best of all for golf. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley saw it and understood, and now hereabouts the land is comparatively priceless so much is it coveted by the golfers, who also now understand as they see. Other great courses have been the productions of a long period of time, improvements continually on an original structure of the crudest kind. Westward Ho! was not made in a season, nor in many seasons. Only recently some of its most delightful touches have been added to it. St. Andrews was the work of generations. But Prince's, though it has been appreciably changed from its original design, was like one great flash of inspiration, and as such is surely the most amazing achievement in the architecture of golf. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley in other ways has shown himself to be a man of immense imagination; but was it ever better illustrated than in his making of Prince's? Our admiration for the course may be not the less but greater because we cannot play her properly. For my own humble part I love most the championship course of the Royal Cinque Ports club at Deal near by. Here there are charm and variety, and holes of the most splendid character. If some find fault with them, what does it matter when they are so good to play? The Royal St. George's course at Sandwich, again, is a most beautiful thing; surely there is no other which gives such an infinite pleasure to a greater number of capable players. But for sheer golfing quality, Prince's truly is the queen of all.
I have asked Mr. Mallaby-Deeley to tell me what his ideals are in this matter, and in response he has made a statement of such interest and value that it should be given at its length. He said that, premising that for purposes of consideration we should regard "ideal links" as having reference only to the sequence of holes, both as to ranges of length, difficulty, and beauty of design, he submitted that the making of such an ideal course, given suitable ground, depended then on three things only, being knowledge, time, and money. St. Andrews and his own Prince's come nearest to this ideal, but the former fails in that it is too straight in and out, and also because one can pull all the way out and all the way home again without falling into any trouble, the truth being that the more one pulls the greater the possibility of safety in doing so. Some say that if you do thus pull you cannot reach the greens, but in these days that is not so. We have seen them reach those greens after the most exaggerated pulling. Then he thinks that the set of St. Andrews in the matter of prevailing winds is far from ideal, for so often the wind is at one's back all the way out and against the player all the way coming home, or the other way about. Again, no one can deny, he says, that St. Andrews has three if not four very ordinary and commonplace holes. Prince's, as now laid out, has in general opinion not a single commonplace or uninteresting hole in the whole course, but it has had the advantage of being laid out many years after St. Andrews, and after the introduction of the rubber ball. A course comes nearer to the ideal as its holes are placed to every variety of wind. In the early days of Prince's at Sandwich the disadvantage of an in and out coursewere soon discovered and an enormous amount of money was spent in altering it to its present form, in which, with the single exception of St. George's, it is the best in existence, the old course at Sandwich being ideal in this respect. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley, looking upon his Prince's in the supercritical way of a pleased but still insistent creator, can see only one blemish in it, and that is that the two short holes, being the third and the fifth—though the fifth is longer than the third—come too close together. Any two holes on a course may separately be extremely good, but coming together lack something of perfection because of the repetition that instantly arises. He would have the pin visible for every approach shot on his ideal links, and the only exception he would make would be in the case of a full second shot with a long carry over a high bunker to the end of it, for this to his mind is a most interesting shot. Such an one, he points out, is that presented at the sixteenth hole at Littlestone, and he would be surprised to know that any one would ever think of altering that hole in order to enable a player in the distance to see the pin. He also would not agree to placing a bunker immediately at the back of the green, which punishes the man who dares to be up and encourages "pawkiness."
The visible pin is imperative at short holes; he will admit no exceptions. But all who have been to Prince's have been most impressed with the beauty and golfing perfection of the dog-legged holes there, a couple of which are presented at the beginning of the round, immediately introducing the stranger to some of the best delights of this course. He would have dog-leg holes of both shapes in his round, those bending to the right to worry the slicer, and those angled towards the left to help the long driver who greatly dares. The first hole at Hoylake and the second and eleventh at Prince's aredog-leg holes that he likes best. But, he will tell you, by far the most vital matters to consider in making any course with pretensions to being ideal are the position of the greens and the bunkering through the course and near the hole, and, though it is a consideration that is too often overlooked, it is nearly as important to bear in mind from which quarter the prevailing wind blows. He believes every shot from the tee to the hole ought to be of equal importance, but in the case of the majority of the courses this is not so. Despite the fact that on the tee the man has everything in his favour, a perfect stance and a teed-up ball, he is given more space to play into and a greater margin for inaccuracy than in the case of any other shot. This, says the architect, is wrong. Surely it should be as necessary on the ideal course to place the tee shot as any other. He has turned the subject of ribbon bunkers very thoroughly over in his mind. In a general way, he does not like them because of the varying winds. He says, "Tutiores ibis in medias vias," is a safe and golden rule of life, and it applies equally to ribbon bunkers which while they make some holes mar many more. Most frequently on account of wind and other things this form of hazard fails as a fair guard to the green for a hole that is meant for two full shots. It is then wrongly placed, and would generally be improved by the substitution of ear bunkers to catch sliced and pulled shots thereto. The push shot is one of the most difficult in the game to play, but it is one of the prettiest and most satisfactory in accomplishment; but the ribbon bunker is often unfair to the man who plays it. Yet the absence of such ribbon bunkers does not prevent the man who likes to play his high mashie shots from still playing them. Thus the absence of this form of bunker is fair to all, while if placed very near the green its presence penalises the push-shot player. But many a tee shot would be tame if it were not for theribbon bunkers some way ahead. In epitome he says to the student of architecture—"Bunker your course so that every bad shot is punished; place your bunkers so that every shot must be played and played well; make the length of your holes such that if a shot is foozled it costs you a stroke; guard your greens right and left, and even to the very edge and into the green itself, if necessary, but this must of course depend on the length of shot to be played; and at one-shot holes make the green a very fort of surrounding bunkers, and guard the tee shot. Do not leave it open as at the famous short hole at St. Andrews, a much overrated hole. But above all things, make your bunkers fair; don't make them impossible to get out of except by playing back."