Chapter I: Preface: (Written in 1914)

I agreed to the suggestion that I should write these reminiscences, mainly because it seems to me that circumstances have thrown my life along such lines that I really have been more than any other man at the centre of the growth of golf--a growth out of nothingness in England, and of relative littleness in Scotland, fifty years ago, to its present condition of a fact of real national importance. I saw all the beginnings, at Westward Ho! of the new life of English golf. I followed its movement at Hoylake and later at Sandwich. I was on the Committee initiating the Amateur Championship, the International Match, the Rules of Golf Committee and so on. I have been Captain in succession of the Royal North Devon, Royal Liverpool, Royal St. George's and Royal and Ancient Clubs, as well as many others, and in these offices have been not only able but even obliged to follow closely every step in the popular advancement of the game. I do not mention these honours vaingloriously, but only by way of showing that no one else perhaps has had quite the same opportunities.

Possibly I should explain, too, the apparent magniloquence of the phrase describing golf as a "fact of real national importance." I do not think it is an over-statement. I use it irrespective of the intrinsic merits of the game, as such. When we consider the amount of healthy exercise that it gives to all ages and sexes, the amount of money annually expended on it, the area of land (in many places otherwise valueless) that is devoted to it, the accession in house and land values for which it is responsible, the miles of railway and motor travel of which it is the reason, the extent of house building of which it has been the cause, and the amount of employment which it affords--when these and other incidental features are totalled up, it will be found, I think, that there is no extravagance at all in speaking of the golf of the present day as an item of national importance. At least, if golf be not so, it is difficult to know what is.

It is because I have in my head the material for the telling of the history of this rise of golf to its present status that I have ventured to write these personal reminiscences, and underlying them all has been the sense that I was telling the story of the coming of golf, as well as narrating tales of the great matches and the humorous incidents that I have seen and taken part in by the way.

POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE

(_Written in 1919_)

Reading the above "foreword," and also the pages which follow it, after the immense chasm cleft in our lives and habits by the War, I find little to modify as a result of the delay in publication. What does strike me with something very like a thrill of terror is the appalling egotism of the whole. I can truly say that I feel guiltily aware and ashamed of it. I cannot, however, say that I see my way clear to amend it. If one is rash enough to engage in the gentle pastime of personal reminiscence at all, it is difficult to play it without using the capital "I" for almost every tee shot. I will ask pardon for my presumption in plucking a passage from one of the world's great classics, to adorn so slight a theme as this, and will conclude in the words of Michael, Lord of Montaigne:--"Thus, gentle Reader, myselfe am the groundworke of my booke: it is then no reason thou shouldst employe thy time about so frivolous and vaine a subject."[1]

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS 11

II HOW GOLF IN ENGLAND GREW 17

III OF YOUNG TOMMY MORRIS AND OTHER GREAT MEN 23

IV THE SPREAD OF GOLFING IN ENGLAND 29

V THE WEAPONS OF GOLF IN THE SEVENTIES 35

VI HOW MEN OF WESTWARD HO! WENT ADVENTURING IN THE NORTH 41

VII GOLF AT OXFORD 47

VIII THE START OF THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE GOLF MATCHES 53

IX GOLFING PILGRIMAGES 59

X WESTWARD HO! HOYLAKE AND ST. ANDREWS IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES 65

XI FIRST DAYS AT ST. ANDREWS 71

XII THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP 77

XIII ON GOLF BOOKS AND GOLF BALLS 84

XIV THE FIRST AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP 90

XV MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR AND HIS INFLUENCE IN GOLF 96

XVI THE SECOND AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP 102

XVII THE FIRST GOLF IN AMERICA 108

XVIII HOW I LOST THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND PLAYED THE
MOST WONDERFUL SHOT IN THE WORLD 114

XIX JOHNNY BALL AND JOHNNY LAIDLAY 120

XX A CHAPTER OF ODDS AND ENDS 126

XXI A MORE LIBERAL POLICY AT ST. ANDREWS 132

XXII THE FIRST AMATEUR WIN OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP 138

XXIII GOLF ON THE CONTINENT AND IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 144

XXIV ABOUT HAROLD HILTON, FREDDY TAIT AND OTHERS 150

XXV THE COMING OF THE THREE GREAT MEN 156

XXVI THE REVOLT OF THE AMAZONS 162

XXVII THE MAKING OF INLAND COURSES 168

XXVIII VARIOUS CHAMPIONSHIPS AND THE WANDERING SOCIETIES 174

XXIX THE COMIC COMING OF THE HASKELL BALL 180

XXX AN HISTORIC MATCH AND AN HISTORIC TYPE 186

XXXI THE INTERNATIONAL MATCH 192

XXXII HOW MR. JUSTICE BUCKLEY KEPT HIS EYE ON THE HASKELL BALL 198

XXXIII THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP OF 1903 204

XXXIV TRAVIS'S YEAR 210

XXXV HOW GOLF HAS GRIPPED AMERICA 216

XXXVI THE END OF THE ROUND 223

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Montaigne's Essays_, Florio's translation.]

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

The writer, the first English Captain of the Royal and Ancient, buying
back, according to custom, the ball struck off to win the Captaincy
_Frontispiece_

Borough House, Northam 12

Mr. Peter Steel driving the gravel pit at Blackheath 13

At Pau: the oldest of non-Scottish Golf Clubs 16

Captain's Medal of the Royal North Devon Golf Club 17

The Ladies' Course at Pau, in the Days of the Crinoline 20

Miss Cecil Leitch 21

Westward Ho! 26

An Old Hoylake Group 27

An Old Westward Ho! Group 32

Thomas Owen Potter 33

"Old Tom" 70

Douglas Rolland and Archie Simpson 71

John Ball 80

A.F. Macfie 81

A.J. Balfour 100

Crawford 101

John Ball, as a Yeoman 120

J.E. Laidlay 121

The Chasm on the Old Biarritz Course 144

Arnaud Massy 145

J.E. Laidlay, John Ball, junr., Horace G. Hutchinson, and P.C.
Anderson 150

H.H. Hilton 151

Freddy Tait 154

J.H. Taylor 156

Harry Vardon 157

James Braid 160

Horace Hutchinson and Leslie Balfour Melville 161

Amateur Championship, St. Andrews, 1901 174

Amateur Championship, St. Andrews, 1895 175

Old Leather Ball, etc. 180

Gutty _v._ Rubber Core 181

The Amateur and Professional Sides at Sandwich in 1894 186

"Fiery" 187

Walter Travis 210

Charles B. Macdonald 211

FIFTY YEARS OF GOLF