The Best Golf Stories Ever Told Page 11

  When everything was ready, more of these golfers came across from England to play this new game which we had never seen before, and all the youngsters of the locality were enticed into their service to carry their clubs. I was among the number, and that was my first introduction to the game. We did not think much of it upon our first experience; but after we had carried for a few rounds we came to see that it contained more than we had imagined. Then we were seized with a desire to play it ourselves, and discover what we could do. But we had no links to play upon, no clubs, no balls, and no money. However, we surmounted all these difficulties. To begin with, we laid out a special course of our very own. It consisted of only four holes, and each one of them was only about fifty yards long, but for boys of seven that was quite enough. We made our teeing grounds, smoothed out the greens, and, so far as this part of the business was concerned, were soon ready for play. There was no difficulty about balls, for we decided at once that the most suitable article for us, in the absence of real gutties, was the big white marble which we called a taw, and which was about half the size of an ordinary golf ball, or perhaps a little less than that. But there was some anxiety in our juvenile minds when the question of clubs came to be considered, and I think we deserved credit for the manner in which we disposed of it. It was apparent that nothing would be satisfactory except a club fashioned on the lines of a real golf club, and that to procure anything of the sort, we should have to make it ourselves. Therefore, after several experiments, we decided that we would use for the purpose the hard wood of the tree which we called the lady oak. To make a club we cut a thick branch from the tree, sawed off a few inches from it, and then trimmed this piece so that it had a faint resemblance to the heads of the drivers we had seen used on the links. Any elaborate splicing operations were out of the question, so we agreed that we must bore a hole in the centre of the head. The shaft sticks that we chose and trimmed were made of good thorn, white or black, and when we had prepared them to our satisfaction we put the poker in the fire and made it red hot, then bored a hole with it through the head, and tightened the shaft with wedges until the club was complete. With this primitive driver we could get what was for our diminutive limbs a really long ball, or a long taw as one should say. In these later days a patent has been taken out for drivers with the shaft let into the head, which are to all intents and purposes the same in principle as those which we used to make at Grouville.

  By and by some of us became quite expert at the making of these clubs, and we set ourselves to discover ways and means of improving them. The greater elaboration of such brassies as we had seen impressed us, and we also found some trouble with our oak heads in that, being green, they were rather inclined to chip and crack. Ultimately we decided to sheathe the heads entirely with tin. It was not an easy thing to make a good job of this, and we were further troubled by the circumstance that our respective fathers had no sympathy with us, and declined upon any account to lend us their tools. Consequently we had no option but to wait until the coast was clear and then surreptitiously borrow the tools for an hour or two. We called these tin-plated drivers our brassies, and they were certainly an improvement on our original clubs. Occasionally a club was made in this manner which exhibited properties superior to those possessed by any other, as clubs will do even today. Forthwith the reputation of the maker of this club went up by leaps and bounds, and he was petitioned by others to make clubs for them, a heavy price in taws and marbles being offered for the service. The club that had created all this stir would change hands two or three times at an increasing price until it required the payment of four or five dozen marbles to become possessed of it. But the boy who owned the treasure was looked upon as the lord of the manor, and odds were demanded of him in the matches that we played.

  We practised our very elementary kind of golf whenever we could, and were soon enthusiastic. I remember particularly that many of our best matches were played in the moonlight. The moon seemed to shine more clearly at Jersey than in England, and we could see splendidly. Four of us would go out together on a moonlight night to play, and our little competition was arranged on the medal system by scores. Usually a few marbles were at stake. To prevent the loss of taws one of us was sent ahead to watch for their coming and listen for the faint thud of their fall, while the other three drove from the tee. Then the three came forward while the watcher went back to drive, and I am sorry to say that our keenness in those days led us to disregard certain principles of the sportsman’s code of honour, which we appreciated better as we grew up. What I mean is that the watcher was often handicapped in a way that he little suspected, for when he went back to the tee, and we went forward and found that our balls were not always so well up as we had hoped, we gave them a gentle kick forwards; for in the dim light we were able to do this unknown to each other. But in legitimate play we often got a 3 at these fifty-yard holes, and with our home-made clubs, our little white taws, our lack of knowledge, and our physical feebleness all taken into consideration, I say we have often done less creditable things since then.

  After such beginnings, we progressed very well. We began to carry more and more for the golfers who came to Grouville; we found or were given real balls that took the place of the taws, and then a damaged club occasionally came our way, and was repaired and brought into our own service. Usually it was necessary to put in new shafts, and so we burnt holes in the heads and put in the sticks, as we did with clubs of our own make; but these converted clubs were disappointing in the matter of durability. It happened once or twice that golfers for whom we had been carrying gave us an undamaged club as a reward for our enthusiasm, and we were greatly excited and encouraged when such a thing happened. I used to carry clubs about twice a week. I remember that Mr. Molesworth and Dr. Purves, both well known in the golfing world, were two players for whom I very often carried, and only the other day when I saw the former at the Professional Tournament at Richmond, watching the play, I was able to remind him of those times and of a particular shot he once played. We young caddies were very eager to learn the game thoroughly, and we were in the habit of watching these golfers very closely, comparing their styles, and then copying anything from them that seemed to take our fancy. I may say at once, in reply to a question that I am often asked, and which perhaps my present readers may themselves be inclined to put, that I have never in my life taken a single golfing lesson from anyone, and that whatever style I may possess is purely the result of watching others play and copying them when I thought they made a stroke in a particularly easy and satisfactory manner. It was my habit for very many years after these early days, until in fact I had won the Open Championship, to study the methods of good golfers in this way, and there are few from whom one is not able to learn something. I cannot say that the play of any one man particularly impressed me; I cannot point to any player, past or present, and declare that I modelled my style on his. It seemed to me that I took a little from one and a little from another until my swing was a composition of the swings of several players, and my approach shots likewise were of a very mixed parentage. Of course when I took a hint from the play of anyone I had been watching it required much subsequent practice properly to weld it into my own system; but I think that this close watching of good players, and the borrowing from their styles of all information that you think is good, and then constantly practising the new idea yourself, is an excellent method of improving your golf, though I do not recommend it as the sole method of learning, despite the success which I personally have achieved. However, this is a matter for later consideration.

  As we were such a large family and my father’s means were very limited, there was the necessity which is common in such cases for all of the boys to turn out early in life and do something towards helping the others, and accordingly I went to work when I was thirteen. Some time afterwards I became gardener to the late Major Spofforth of Beauview, who was himself a very keen golfer, and who occasionally gave me some of his old clubs. Now and then, when
he was in want of a partner, he used to take me out to play with him, and I shall never forget the words he spoke to me one day after we had played one of these matches. “Henry, my boy,” he said, “take my advice, and never give up golf. It may be very useful to you some day.” Certainly his words came true. I can only remember about these games that I was in the habit of getting very nervous over them, much more so than I did later on when I played matches of far more consequence. I joined a working men’s golf club that had been formed, and it was through this agency that I won my first prize. A vase was offered for competition among the members, the conditions being that six medal rounds were to be played at the rate of one a month. When we had played five, I was leading by so very many strokes that it was next to impossible for any of the others to catch me up, and as just then my time came for leaving home and going out into the greater world of golf, the committee kindly gave me permission to play my last round two or three weeks before the proper time. It removed all doubt as to the destination of the prize, which has still one of the most honoured places on my mantelpiece. At that time my handicap for this club was plus 3, but that did not mean that I would have been plus 3 anywhere else. As a matter of fact, I should think I must have been about 8 or 10.

  By this time my younger brother Tom had already gone away to learn club-making from Lowe at St. Anne’s-on-Sea. He played very much the same game of golf as I did at that time, and it was his venture and the success that waited upon it that made me determine to strike out. While Tom was at St. Anne’s he went on a journey north to take part in a tournament at Musselburgh, where he captured the second prize. Thereupon I came to the conclusion that, if Tom could do that, then I too with a little patience might do the same. Indeed, I was a very keen golfer just then. At last Lowe was summoned to Lord Ripon’s place at Ripon, near Harrogate, to lay out a new nineholes course, and Tom wrote to me saying that they would be wanting a professional there, and if I desired such an appointment I had better apply for it without delay. I did so, and was engaged. I was twenty years of age when I left home to assume these duties.

  ronnie leask

  THE STORY OF MY LIFE AS AN AMATEUR GOLFER, FROM A MEMBER OF THE “GREAT TRIUMVIRATE”

  JAMES BRAID

  They say that I was just like the average Earlsferry boy, but that I was a little more precocious than some of the others in golfing matters. My first dim recollections of anything at all in this world were of some vague happenings about the time when I was five or six years of age, and they are of my always being about with a miniature golf club in my hand, and running about outside my parents’ house knocking a ball with it at every chance that presented itself. The tendency towards golf, therefore, seemed strong, and the natural result of it, seeing what were my parents’ circumstances in life, was that I should be a caddie—during school holidays only. I went to school in the usual way, and filled up my spare time in carrying clubs for the visitors; but when there were no visitors I spent the odd hours in practising all manner of shots; and thus when I was a very small boy I had already begun to take the game seriously and was starting on the right lines, since I was watching a good deal and then practising with just an odd club—which very likely was all that I possessed at the time, so there was not much self-sacrifice really in this kind of practice. My driver generally consisted of an old wooden head that I had picked up somewhere after it had been discarded as worthless, and to this was attached a shaft that had been found somewhere else in the same way. People nowadays talk about the modern system of socketing the shafts of wooden clubs on to the heads, as if it were a recent invention, whereas the caddies of my generation certainly socketed the shafts of the clubs that they made for themselves in this way, the method being the simplest possible, namely, boring a hole through the head and fastening the shaft in it as tightly as possible. As for iron clubs, we had never more than one, and that one was usually a cleek with a long and well-lofted head. We had no such things as putters and niblicks in those days. The cleek had to do all the work, and, with the practice we had with it, we made it do it very well. Reflecting on the practice got in this way by boys who have no money to spend on clubs, one cannot but think, however hard their lot may have appeared to them at the time, that it was exceedingly valuable, very likely more so than it would have been if a set of clubs had been available.

  I never had any lessons; I simply watched and copied. The Earlsferry course was not quite the same then as it is now. At that time it was made up of nine good holes, and besides these there were three others in Melon Park, which were taken in whenever it was thought desirable to do so. By the time I was seven or eight years of age I began to show pretty good form for a boy such as I was, and I was apparently a little better than the other youngsters of my age. The visitors to the place gave prizes every year for a competition among the caddies, and some of the boys who took part in these contests achieved considerable distinction afterwards. Among them were the Simpsons, who were, of course, much older than I was. I was only eight years old when I first entered in one of these competitions, and they put me to play in the junior section that time, and the test was score play over nine holes, these nine being the three in Melon Park played over three times. I won with twenty strokes to spare, and thus came out a winner in the first competition that I ever played in, which was encouraging. My score on that occasion was 54, which, all things considered, was not at all bad. I found in those early days that I could reach the green in three shots at the long holes, and nobody could get there in less than two. In the next competition that I took part in, Archie Simpson, who was four years older than I was, had to give me eight strokes start, and he beat me by two for first place; but in the two following competitions, in which I had to play from scratch, I won the first prize each time, so that I won three times out of four, and I should add that in the last three competitions I played with the senior caddies over the full nine-holes course. This brought me to about the end of my schooldays, and the beginning of another important period in my life.

  I was naturally very keen on golf at this time, and was full of dreams and ambitions as to what I might do in the future. Jamie Anderson, the famous champion of a generation that has passed, had something to do with the stimulation of this ambition, and I shall never forget the encouragement that he gave to me on one occasion when I was only a little boy of about nine years of age. What he said was in its way rather remarkable—to my mind, at least—in view of the things that have happened since then. He was taking part in a match between amateurs and professionals at Earlsferry, and, being Open Champion at the time, his play naturally attracted a great deal of attention. As for us boys, we were, of course, inclined to look upon him as not much less than an idol, and he fascinated me in particular to such an extent that I followed him round the links in a very doglike way, thought it a great thing to touch his clubs, and listened intently to the most trivial remarks that he made, so that I could repeat them to the other boys. Then I hit a shot or two myself to show him what I could do, and he took particular notice of the way that I played them, and asked me to do one or two over again, so that he might make another examination of my style, if such it was to be called. He seemed really to mean what he said, when at last he patted me on the shoulder and told me to go in for as much golf as I could, and practise as thoroughly as possible, and that if I did that I should be Open Champion myself one day. Another incident of these caddie days that I remember very well, was a challenge that was sent by the caddies at Earlsferry to play the caddies at Leven. There was great rivalry between the boys of the two places as to which could put the strongest team on the links, and one day a couple came along from Leven in a boastful manner and declared that if we played them we should not see the way they went. We felt offended, and after consultation among ourselves we sent a formal challenge to the Leven caddies, which, alas! they did not see their way to accept.

  Having left school at the age of thirteen, the usual question arose as to what was to be made of me.
For my own part I was, as might be imagined, very anxious to keep to the links in some capacity or other; but my parents had a very strong prejudice against the game. No doubt they were right in their reasons, for golf then in many respects was not what it is now, but their attitude upset me very much. However, they would not hear of my having any more to do with the game except as a recreation in my spare time, and to settle the matter finally I was apprenticed to a joiner in a little village three miles from Earlsferry. Having to walk forwards and backwards between my home and the village every morning and night, and, having a long working day in the joiner’s shop, I had very little time left for play, except in the summer time, when I usually managed to get in an evening round, and on Saturday afternoons. I joined the local Thistle Golf Club when I was fifteen years of age and won several prizes in its competitions, and generally did fairly well when representing it in the team matches that were played against the St. Andrews Club. By the time I was sixteen I was playing a very useful game, for I was not only down to scratch, but I won a scratch medal and broke the record of the course, which now consisted of eleven holes. This record stood to my credit for two or three years. I might mention that at this time I was playing with heavy clubs, which were also rather longer in the shaft than usual—longer, in fact, than those with which I play now. My style, I suppose, was pretty well what it is now, except that my swing was certainly much shorter; in fact it was a very short swing, and this was a matter that worried me rather, because I felt that I should never do much good in the long game until I let the swing out more. I tried to lengthen it gradually, and, while it was at its shortest when I was about fourteen, I managed to improve it considerably during the next two years. However, it made no material difference to the length of my drive, and it was an unpleasant fact for me at the time that though strong physically, and tall, I was an unusually short driver. I could get no length at all, and almost everybody who could golf respectably could get a longer ball than I could. I tried every known alternative to my system, but to no purpose, and I felt I must resign myself to being a short driver. My driving had, however, the merit of being both steady and straight, and this helped me a good deal. Besides this, my game suffered seriously in another respect, for, as is generally known, I was quite a bad putter until recent years, and during all the years when I was coming on at the game my putting was at its very worst. For my short driving I could make up a great deal in the rest of the play through the green, for I was good with my irons; but I could not save my matches when I was putting in the shocking fashion that I so generally did, and whenever I lost it was nearly all due to this weakness—with the short putts. I was always fairly good at the long ones. It was not until many years afterwards that I overcame this weakness, and did so as the result of hours and days and years of hard practice.