Chapter VIII

THE U. S. G. A., AND THE METHODS OF THE BUSINESS-MAN GOLFER, WITH A REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT OF MUNICIPAL GOLF.

People in England or Scotland do not quite understand what a splendid thing for American golf is the United States Golf Association. It is so absolutely necessary for the game in America that I am sure there would be little that is like golf there now if there had been no U. S. G. A., with its loyalty and attachment to St. Andrews. There would be few Americans coming to play on the links of the homeland of the game, and there would be no British golfers wandering happily among the American courses. American golf would have become as much like the old game as American college football is like the football that is played at Oxford and Cambridge, which is to say that it is not at all like it. America is not a country small in space like our own happy islands. There it is in its millions of miles, new everywhere, and with little communities of golfers so far apart as New York and San Francisco, Massachusetts and Arizona, and isolated golfers in the loneliest places trying to bring others to their pastime for the matches they would have. What should all these people, away from all the influences of the home of the game, hot with the spirit of freedom, unrestrained by laws and conventionalities, eager to do things better than they have been done before--what should they care for St. Andrews and traditions, and the preservation of the unity of the game? As sure as eagles fly, and stars are bright, they would have made it to suit themselves in every community. Here they would have abolished the stymie, in another place they would have changed the size of the hole, away in Texas they might have permitted the introduction of the "mechanical contrivance," and soon there would have been a hundred golfs in the States, and not a real one among them. Just when this possibility, without being an immediate probability, was arising the U. S. G. A. came into existence. It joined all the golfers of America together in a republic for the preservation of the unity of the game, and for the promotion of its welfare in the spirit that the game had been cultivated in the homeland. And being thus given power, it has ruled with a strong hand. It has kept American golf in order as nothing else could have done, and as a governmental machine, I who have made some close examination of it, regard it as perfect, which is not to say that we need such a thing in Britain. In America I have had the pleasure of the intimate acquaintance of Mr. Robert Watson, Mr. Silas H. Strawn, Mr. G. Herbert Windeler, Mr. William Fellowes Morgan, Mr. Harry L. Ayer, Mr. John Reid, junior, and many others of the leaders of the Union, and better men for the direction of such a game as golf, in whose hands it is quite safe, there could not be. They hold the right spirit of the game, and they are wise men, conservative in their golfing ways. Mr. Windeler indeed is an old British golfer like Mr. Macdonald, who was one of the original gathering that established the U. S. G. A. In the December of 1894 the representatives of five of the leading clubs met and framed the constitution of the U. S. G. A., and Mr. Theodore A. Havemeyer, of the Newport Club, was chosen president.

The constitution of the U.S.G.A. is an interesting study. There are two classes of members, active and allied, and the difference is that the active members, who exercise control, are clubs that have been steadied by age and experience, and have acquired dignity. The definition in the constitution is made thus: "Any regularly organised club in the United States, supporting and maintaining a golf course of at least nine holes, and whose reputation and general policy are in accord with the best traditions and the high ideals of the game, shall be eligible to election as an Active Member." Then, as to the Allied Members, it is said that--"Any regularly organised club of good reputation in the United States shall be eligible to election as an Allied Member." There are far more allied members than there are active members, and the former are only admitted to the latter when they have thoroughly proved their worth. Thus the allied clubs have always an ambition before them, and they can only achieve it by conducting their golf on the best and oldest plan. At every meeting of the Association each active club is entitled to be represented by one voting delegate whose appointment has to be certified in advance by his club to the secretary of the Association. Allied clubs have no voting privileges, but all members of active and allied clubs have the right to attend all meetings of the Association, and to participate in the discussion of any question. The active clubs pay thirty dollars a year for subscription, and the allied clubs pay ten. Article IX. of the Constitution gives the Association its power and authority. It says: "The acceptance of membership in the Association shall bind each club to uphold all the provisions of the Constitution, bye-laws, and other rules of the Association; and to accept and enforce all rules and decisions of the Executive Committee acting within its jurisdiction. Any club failing in its obligations as above set forth may be suspended or expelled by a two-thirds vote of the Association, or by a two-thirds vote of all members of the Executive Committee; provided such club shall have been given due notice of the charge or charges preferred against it, and an opportunity to be heard in its own defence. Any club thus suspended or expelled by vote of the Executive Committee may appeal from its decision to the delegates at any annual or special meeting of the Association."

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After this about the machinery of American golf, consider the men. There are three classes of golfers in the United States, corresponding to some extent to similar classes in Britain, but they are rather more sharply defined than with us. There is the class that regards the game as a sport for competition, almost as a form of athletics, being mainly but not exclusively the younger class; there is the business-man class that believes in it as the ideal, and indeed the only recreation satisfying the needs of the times as a relaxation from the strain of life and work, and a means of promoting physical and mental efficiency, such people being as with us the largest section and the mainstay in one sense of the game; and there is the humbler class who play upon the public courses.

I do not believe after the closest observation and most impartial consideration that the best American golfers are yet quite so good as ours, but in recent years they have been rapidly lessening the gap that has existed, their thoroughness, determination, and efficiency are most wonderful, and if they had our courses and climate they might become better than we are. They think they will anyhow. As it is they are handicapped by lack of full-blooded seaside courses, and a climate that is by no means ideal for the game; and although by their zeal they have to some extent discounted that handicap, I feel that they can only neutralise it altogether and go beyond it by the production of the occasional genius. The good Americans seem to me mostly to play what we could call a plain, straight game. American courses are for the most part without any sharp undulations; there is nothing in America like our rolling seaside links. Therefore the players are not taught or induced to be making allowances for this and that in all the days of their golf from their youth upwards, and they have not the sea-coast winds to lead them in the same way as we have. So they have good reason to play straight to the hole, and never to depart from doing so without the most obvious and pressing cause. It follows from this that the American players have fewer "scientific" or "fancy" strokes at their disposal, and those who have visited this country have been remarked upon for the plain simplicity of their iron play. They seem to standardise their shots. But assuming that this is their principle or their system, it enables them to concentrate keenly and with fine effect on accuracy. Delicacy of touch, splendid judgment of distance, and perfection of execution are strong characteristics of the American players, who do not need to be reminded that there are no bunkers in the air. It is the straight game of the Americans with all its accuracy that is paying in their matches against us. At the same time I think that the comparative weakness of the Americans in wooden club play is a serious handicap to them, and their courses need to be tightened up to improve it. That "American hook" of theirs is a dangerous thing sometimes, and their round flat swings are looked upon by some of our best British authorities with much suspicion.

But there is one most important way in which they are scoring over us. They are beating us in temperament, concentration, and determination, and in the capacity to make the very most of their own game, so that not a shot of it is wasted. This means very much. A man may be plus five, but of such a temperament and such ways that he habitually wastes two or three holes in a match through negligence or slackness. The Americans do not waste holes in this way. They waste nothing. The game of which they are capable is produced nearly every time at full quality and is made as effective as it possibly can be. The utmost pains are taken over every stroke; the man blames himself for nothing after it is made. His concentration is enormous; he is often inclined to race through the green, but his capacity for being slow and meditative, when necessary, is great; and most noticeable again is his persistence, which is another way of making the most of a game that a man possesses. Of course all these remarks are applied to the two classes of players in a very general way. There are many exceptions among the Americans and there are many among our players, but that they do indicate the tendencies in the two countries I am certain. The American game may not be as scientific and complete as ours, but its more serious exponents do make the most of it as ours do not, and probably the high importance that is attached to the numerous first-class tournaments they have over there has something to do with it. They believe in competitions more than we do.

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This matter of consideration and concentration is one to which every player should give closer attention. His success is largely dependent upon it. He may think he concentrates enormously as it is, more than on anything else, but often he deceives himself. Not one man in ten gets as much in effect out of his game as it is capable of. He walks to his ball and plays some kind of a shot, with a more or less hazy idea of what it is that he wishes to do. When he finds his object has not been accomplished he suddenly remembers something, and it is a case of "I should have known," or "If I had only thought," or "What a pity I did not look." With such people a round of golf is a succession of regrets, and it is the simple truth that the majority could do far better with their game if they did not waste so much of it by carelessness, thoughtlessness, and a sort of distraction which allows their minds to wander to other things than the stroke in hand, and sometimes by their conversation too. When a man has played a stroke he has quite sufficient to occupy his mind for the next minute or two in considering how he shall play the next one, and the many features of the case that will be presented to him.

It is a remunerative resolution to make at the beginning of the season, to think deeply upon all the points of match play, and then exploit the art of it with some thoroughness. It is not difficult. All who have attended the Amateur Championship meetings and have been close observers of what happens there can remember how even players of the very first class in this most important of tournaments let themselves get beaten by inferior players simply because they do not make the most of their game. They forget things, do not think enough, and play strokes carelessly because at the time of doing so they seem to feel it does not matter. No stroke should ever be played as though it were not the most important of the game--as it might turn out to be. The old maxim that if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, applies with tremendous force to match-play golf. Many a time when the result of a stroke played exactly as intended, is not what was anticipated, through some of the circumstances not having been taken into consideration, the mistake that was made is obvious then. The man excuses himself by saying that he cannot see and think of everything, but nine times out of ten he should have seen. The most fatal mistake, however, that many players make in the early part of the season when their match-playing qualities have not been properly revived, is in their letting matches slip, in not pressing home advantages that they gain, and, above all, being too indifferent upon the future in the early part of a match, and too careless when they get a lead. All this sounds very simple, very obvious, but it often takes the best part of a season to drive the lessons home into the minds of golfers who are losing matches through their weakness in fighting quality.

Now here are one or two samples of points in regard to which the golfer constantly neglects to display his cunning and is the loser thereby. Assuming that in the general way you can get as much length when it is wanted as the other man, always try to make him play the odd to you. You do so naturally with your tee shots and many of the others, but are not really thinking at the time that you are wanting him to play the odd. The man who is playing the odd, even from a very little way behind the other, is at a much greater moral disadvantage than is often suspected, and if the other man always noticed things as much as he should, he is at a greater practical advantage than he realises, for if his opponent fails he can see the cause of it, this remark applying especially to what happens in the short game. How many putts have gone wrong that never need have done had the man who made them watched what happened when his adversary putted first! Then, again, on this point of making the other man play the odd the case is constantly recurring where both men are obliged to play short of some hazard, or to take a particular line to a hole which is not the straight one. The man who goes second will find it very much to his advantage if he tries to squeeze so closely up to the point of danger as to be just nearer to it than the other, the latter then having to play the odd and being then more inclined to press with it and perhaps to miss it. The man who is playing the odd is in a sense taking a shot into the unknown; the other man knows everything. That is just the difference. Another stupid mistake that many men make is to try experimental or fancy shots, perhaps with clubs that are unfamiliar to them, just because the other man has played two more. How many thousands of holes have been lost through that! The experimental shot fails, the other man makes a good one, the experimenter suddenly finds he has to fight for it, and a minute or two later is watching his adversary take the honour from the next tee. Again, what matches could have been won that were lost if the players had only shown half the sense that Mr. Hilton did in the Amateur Championship of 1912 at Prestwick, in picking his places for putting, as it were, always, whenever possible, running up so that he would have to putt uphill instead of down, the former being far the easier kind of putting. Nowadays there are inclines on every green and round about the hole, and a flat putt is a comparative rarity. But the average man never thinks of these inclines until he has to play along them. The time for most thinking about them is when making the stroke before, so that the putt may be along the easiest line to the hole. This is not a question of skill; it is simply one of sense. A man can play short of the hole or past it, or to the right or left, and there will be one point from which the putting will be easier than the other. It may often happen that it would pay better to be four yards past the hole than two short of it, for you will not only have had the chance of holing, but the putt back may be an uphill one.

But with it all, the habit must be cultivated of thinking as much as possible in advance--thinking quickly and acting with decision. Questions of the value of practice swings have arisen lately. We have seen rather too much of these practice swings in some quarters. We may believe in the practice swing--just one or at most two. A man may be an experienced golfer, and he may have played a certain stroke nearly a million times before, but golf is essentially a game of fears and doubts, and apart from just setting the right muscles in a state of complete preparation for the task in hand a practice swing gives one a little confidence. The shot is shaped; there is nothing to do but repeat the stroke that has been made; it can be done. To that extent the practice swing may be thoroughly recommended. But some members of the young American School go farther than this, and it is questionable whether they are wise. For one thing the delicate muscles and the nervous system that are concerned with the stroke in hand are easily tired, and if the shot is a long one needing power the odds are against its being done so well after five practice swings as after one. Show me the man who can drive his best and straightest after five practice swings on the tee. Then there is the hesitation and doubt that are induced. I believe that in most cases these players are really waiting for an inspiration. They are not ready for the stroke they have to play. Jack White in once confiding to me some of the secrets of his successful putting, said that when he went about on the green examining the line back and front, he was simply trying to gain time and nothing more. "I want to feel that I want to putt," he said, "and while I am waiting for that feeling coming on I can hardly stand motionless on the green or look up at the sky." It is that way with these Americans; they are waiting for an inspiration. But it does not always seem to be responsive, and they wait too long. A moment must come when they are as ready for the shot as ever they will be in their lives; if they let it pass nothing but doubts and hesitations can follow, and that is the danger to the player of excessive slowness. He begins to fear his fate too much. And also one round of golf played like this makes a fearful mental strain, and how often do we see that men who win their morning matches by such methods look very tired and lose easily in the afternoon.

The case of Mr. Ouimet, who has so suddenly become a great power in American golf, has already been considered, and Mr. Walter Travis's high position was established long ago. Apart from these two, the new star and the old one, and the young professional M'Dermott, there are two others who hold a higher place in the opinion of the golfers of their own country and ours than any other players do, and those are Mr. Charles Evans, junior, of Chicago, and Mr. Jerome D. Travers, foremost players of the west and east as they respectively are. In every way Mr. Evans is a very delightful golfer. When we saw him at Prestwick in 1911 he was even then a brilliant player, and one who impressed British golfers as no other had ever done since Mr. Travis had won at Sandwich, and he had then an advantage which the winner of our championship had not--he had his whole golfing life before him. Since that time he has undoubtedly improved. He has become physically stronger, experience has helped him, and he has greater resource and skill. And despite the fact that he has not yet won an American championship, there is this to be said for him, that in the sense of accomplishment, in variety of stroke, perfection of it, in playing the game as it was meant to be played, as we say, he is still, for all his failures, the best amateur golfer in the United States at the present time. But Mr. Evans is a man of very keen and somewhat too sensitive temperament. He is inclined sometimes to fear his fate unduly. Yet whenever we are inclined to judge him a little harshly for his temperament, let it be remembered that fortune has dealt him some cruel hurts, and that it is not a quality of human man to bear himself indifferently to perpetual adversity. When he was the last hope of his country at the championship at Sandwich in 1914, and striving gallantly, his opponent went to the turn in a record score of 31. To be merely sorry for "Chick" in such circumstances is inadequate; along with him we smiled at the absurd extent to which his ill-luck spitefully pursued him then. Even though it had to be counted, it was unreal. He must be a champion some time.

One of the greatest tragedies of his life, so far, was that he suffered in the appalling Amateur Championship at Wheaton, Illinois, in 1912--appalling by reason of the terrible heat that players and all others, including my unlucky but still deeply interested self, were called upon to bear. It has come to be nearly a settled understanding in Britain that the championships must be attended by weather quite ridiculously and most uncomfortably unseasonable. Thunderstorms and lightning, gales and floods--these are the accompaniments of the great golf tournaments of the year in the summer months of May and June, and matters seemed to reach a climax in 1913 when the progress of the final match of the Amateur Championship at St. Andrews had to be suspended because of the terrific storm which flooded the putting greens until there were no holes to putt at, and when in the Open Championship at Hoylake shortly afterwards Taylor had to play his way to victory through a gale against which ordinary people could hardly stand up. Almost does it appear that the American climate is disposed to follow the bad British example in times of championships, seeing what happened at Brookline in the same season; but it was very different at Wheaton in the year when Mr. Hilton failed to retain the American Amateur Championship he had won the season before at Apawamis, and when Mr. Travers beat Mr. Evans in the final by seven and six. Mr. Norman Hunter and some others, Americans, were burned out of that championship by a temperature which at times was more than a hundred in the shade, and while some players conducted their game beneath sunshades that they carried, most of them had towels attached to their golf bags for body-wiping purposes. There was no escape from the heat anywhere, night or day, and no consolation in anything, unless it were that in the city of Chicago a few miles distant the people were reported to be even worse off than we were, and deaths were numerous. Well did we call that the blazing championship, and when I am asked, as is often the case, which of all championship experiences I recall most vividly, my remembrances of events in Britain, far more numerous as they are, give way to an American pair, the hot one at Wheaton in 1912, and the wet one of the British debacle at Brookline a season later. But the sun at its worst could not diminish the enormous interest that there was in that Wheaton final, for the draw and the play had brought about the ideal match, from the spectators' point of view, and even that of the players too, Mr. Travers of the east and Mr. Evans of the west, and finely did the Americans show their appreciation of what had come to pass by wagering incredible numbers of dollars upon it and watching it in thousands. That time it was thought that Mr. Evans would win, and he was three up at the turn in the morning round, but he lost two of the holes before lunch, and I am sure that the reason why he fell such an easy victim to Mr. Travers in the afternoon was that he grieved too much for the loss of those holes, and feared his fate when he need not have done. I know that Mr. Travers in that second round played golf of the most brilliant description that nobody could have lived against; but did Mr. Evans encourage him to do so? This matter of temperament might seem to be a fatal consideration for ever, being one of Nature and seemingly unalterable, were it not that we have had cases of fine golfers with weak temperaments who, perceiving their desperate state, have resolutely and with patience changed those temperaments, or curbed their influence as we should more properly say. The best modern instance of such a change being made is that of George Duncan, and never fear but that "Chick" will soon come to his own as well.

Mr. Jerome Travers is undoubtedly one of the strong men of golf to-day, a big piece of golfing individualism. At twenty years of age he won the American Amateur Championship, in 1912 I saw him win it for the third time, and the following year he won it again at Garden City. In his own golfing country he must be one of the hardest men in the world to beat. He plays the game that suits him and disregards criticism. He began to play when he was nine years old. A year later he laid out a three-holes golf course of his own at home--first hole 150 yards, second 180, third apparently about the same, back to the starting-point. There were no real holes--to hit certain trees was to "hole out." For hour after hour this American child would make the circuit of this little course, and day after day he would work hard to lower his record for these three holes. At thirteen he started playing on a proper nine-holes course at Oyster Bay. At fifteen he became attached to the Nassau Country Club, and there, chiefly under the guidance of Alexander Smith, to whose qualities as tutor he pays high tribute, his game improved. His swing was wrong at the beginning. "Shorten your back swing, and take the club back with your wrists. Swing easily and keep your eye on the ball." That was Smith's advice to him, and he says it served him well. He began to place the right hand under instead of over the shaft, and that added more power to his stroke, and then he discovered that taking the club back with his wrists or starting the club-head back with them, increased its speed and gave him greater distance. Then it was practice, practice, practice for an hour at a time at every individual stroke in the game. He would play the same shot fifty times. He putted for two hours at a stretch, placing his ball at varying distances from the hole, trying short putts, long ones, uphill and downhill putts, and putts across a side-hill green where the ball had to follow a crescent-like course if it had to be holed out or laid dead. During the championship at Apawamis, when he was playing Mr. Hilton, he had what everybody declared to be an impossible putt of twenty feet, downhill over a billowy green, and he holed it because he had practised the same sort of putt before. In the next championship at Wheaton he did an "impossible" bunker shot and laid the ball dead from the foot of the face of the hazard because he had practised that shot also. Next to the Schenectady putter belonging to Mr. Travis his driving iron is, or should be, the most famous club in all America. It is a plain, straight-faced iron with a round back, and is heavy, weighing sixteen ounces. It has a long shaft and a very rough leather grip, and was forged at St. Andrews. This and his other irons are kept permanently rusty. He carries very few clubs--five irons, a Schenectady putter, a brassey and a driver, but, as Mr. Fred Herreshoff, who turns caddie for him in the finals of championships, says, the two latter are for the sake of appearances only. He believes in the centre-shafted Schenectady putter, illegal here but allowed in America, as in no other. He calls for a very low tee, one that is only just high enough to give him a perfect lie, "the duplicate of an ideal lie on the turf." He plays his drives off the right foot, which is about three inches in advance of the left, the ball being just a shade to the right of the left heel, because in that position he finds it easier to keep the eye on the ball without effort, and in the strain of a hard match or competition every simplifying process like this is valuable.

But the most remarkable thing about his preparation for driving is his grip, which is unique. He does not employ the overlapper. He likes the right hand to be under the shaft; but this is the main point--that the first fingers are almost entirely free of the shaft, with the tips resting on the leather, curled inside the thumbs. Both thumbs are pressed firmly against the sides of the first joints of the second fingers, forming a locking device which prevents any possible turning of the shaft. He is an utter believer in this detaching of the first fingers from the club, and declares he could not play in any other way, his theory being that it permits better freedom of the wrists and enables him to get greater power into the stroke without deflecting the club-head from its proper sweep in the swing to the ball. With his driving iron he is a supreme master, and with it alone he has played a round of a difficult course in America, Montclair, in 77. When I watched him win his third championship I decided that in whatever else he might excel he had a finer temperament for match play than almost any other player I had seen. Silent, imperturbable, not a trace of feeling in his countenance, he seemed to be mercilessly forcing his way to victory all the time. Only once since he became established as a champion kind of golfer have his nerves ever failed him, and that was on an occasion of supreme importance, and yet one when the strain upon nerves was not, or should not have been, unduly severe. I saw him lose his match to Mr. Palmer at Sandwich in 1914, and there was something nearly as mysterious about that occurrence as there was about the victory of Mr. Ouimet at Brookline--far more than there was about the defeat of the latter at Sandwich by Mr. Tubbs, for then Mr. Ouimet simply played a poor but not a timid game. But in the Palmer-Travers match the American for the first time for years was afraid. Half way round, all the watchers were saying so, saying his nerves were catching at his shots. Knowing the man, having seen so much of him in America, I could not believe it then; but before the round was ended the truth was clear. His nerves had failed, and it was responsibility that had caused them to do so. He could not possibly have played so poorly otherwise. It was not the real Travers who played that day.

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The middle-aged business-man golfer is an important individual in the general golfing scheme of things in the United States. He is that elsewhere, but he stands out most in America. Well enough does he know how the game is good for him. The early American golfers (those of from ten to twenty years ago) adopted the game enthusiastically, because it answered exactly to certain requirements they had in mind in regard to creating and preserving physical fitness. The American business man leads a quick life and a hard one and, in recent years particularly, his pursuit of this physical fitness has become something of a craze with him, for the reason that through it he seeks to bring the human machine to the highest point of working efficiency and, at the same time, enable the human man to derive more enjoyment and satisfaction from the pleasures of life. This is not a vague, subconscious idea in the American; it is a clear, definite scheme, adopted by thousands and thousands of those who have devoted themselves to the game. Hence their generous support and excellent enthusiasm. The country swarms with men, two-thirds way through an ordinary lifetime, who have only been playing the game for five or six summers and no winters--for in very few places in the northern parts of the United States is any play possible between the late fall and the spring--and who can play a good six-handicap game, British reckoning, for in America they have a system of handicapping according to which scratch is the lowest, and their six handicap is about equivalent to our two or three. The majority of our middle-aged men seem to resign themselves to the idea that in no circumstances can they ever become really good players, and they pretend they are satisfied to make their way round the links merely for the sake of the health and exercise that they obtain from so doing. Perhaps in a sense they are wise, but still it is certain that more than half of the joys and pleasures of golf are missed by those who never feel any improvement being made, who never rise above a steady mediocrity, and who never feel the thrills of playing above their ordinary form.

The business-man golfer is seen at his best at the country clubs near to the great cities. There is nothing elsewhere which for its healthy, honest pleasures and the satisfaction it yields is comparable to the American country club and the life that is pursued there. It gives to the busy man the ideal relaxation he could not obtain in any other way. I spent several days at one of these country clubs, a railroad journey of an hour or so from Chicago, and the experience was illuminating. The American business-man golfer works in the city for part of the day in the summer and spends the rest of his time at the country club, where the predominating features of the life are golf, rest, and sociability. These country clubs are provided with a large number of bedrooms, and are surrounded with cottages, nicely equipped, which generally belong to them and are let for periods to the members. The vitality of the man of whom we are thinking is enormous. He is out of his bed at the club at about six o'clock in the morning, and goes through a process of shower baths, with which the establishment is splendidly appointed. By seven o'clock he is dressed in the thinnest flannels, and sits down to breakfast with thirty or forty other members at 7.15. At this time he is jacketless, and all in white. A large glass of iced water is laid before him to begin with, and then the half of a grape fruit or a cantaloup, with a piece of ice stuck in the middle, is presented as the first course. These things, as we get them in America, are very delicious. At once an argument begins round the table about the qualities of different balls and clubs, and I am closely questioned about the way we do things in England. Next, there is oatmeal porridge laid before us, with tea or coffee, and the men begin to match themselves for the afternoon round. Mr. A says he will play Mr. B for a certain stake, but the latter finds he is already engaged to play Mr. C for a higher one. Eventually, Messrs. A, B, and C agree to play a three-ball match for still more dollars. Such extensive wagering is not the rule, but it is frequent. After the porridge, bacon and eggs, calf's liver and bacon, or something of that kind, is served with a baked potato, a little more iced water may be called for, and there is marmalade with toast and sweet cakes, and, then at a quarter to eight, all get aboard the club motor-omnibuses and are whizzed away to the railroad station, light jackets very likely carried on their arms.

Before nine o'clock they are hard at work in the big city. Some early birds were even there by eight o'clock. They work very hard, no dawdling of any kind, and by one or two o'clock they have finished for the day and are off back to the golf club as fast as they can go. Frequently they are back in time to lunch there. Soup, some meat done in American fashion, an American salad, blueberry pie, iced water, and a glass of cold tea with a lump of ice in it and a piece of lemon, finishing up with a large supply of ice cream, and then a big cigar, are what the American golfer goes out to play upon. The caddie whom he takes out to carry his clubs costs him tenpence an hour--always paid by the hour, during which he is in the golfer's service, and not by the round. By this time the player is in thinner and lighter clothes than ever, and he has been cooled down by more shower baths. His round is played very much as it might be done in England. He is very keen on his game. But he takes a little more time on the consideration of his stroke when once he has reached his ball than we do, and he is most deeply painstaking. Towards the end of the match he may develop an idea for playing the enemy for a number of dollars a hole for the remainder of the round, and when it is all over, everybody is quite satisfied with everything. More shower baths, a lounge, and a cigar, and then a long American dinner, with vegetables very fancily done, corn cobs, sweet salads, plenty of iced water, ice creams, "horses' necks"--ginger ale with lemon and ice--and so forth. Long arguments on the verandah upon the respective merits of British and American golf, and at ten o'clock this busy golfer of the United States gets himself off to bed. He never sits up late. He sleeps, of course, with his windows wide open, with a wire netting arrangement to keep out the flies and mosquitoes, and as he falls away to his slumber he feels that golf is the best of games, that America is the chief of countries, and that this is the most agreeable of all possible worlds. Here I have been writing in general terms, but I should add that each and all of my details are taken from the life, from personal experience at one of the best of these country clubs.

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There are some interesting characters in American golf as everywhere, and the very wealthy golfer in the States is often to be considered. Mr. John D. Rockefeller, the "Oil King," is, as all of us know, an extremely rich man. He is also a business man, if ever there was one. And he is extremely fond of golf. His case may have as little to do with the matters just discussed as you may think, but I shall present it as I found it out. A few years gone Mr. Rockefeller, who has a capacity for giving advice of a very shrewd and worldly character, announced his intention of retiring from the presidency of the Oil Trust and of devoting a fair part of the remainder of his life to playing golf. Since then he has discovered that it is easier to make a million dollars than to hole a five-yard putt, for the Rockefeller millions now make themselves and the putts are as unholeable as ever. His methods of playing, and his moralisings on the game, are not like those of any other man. Readers must judge for themselves as to whether they have anything to learn from them; I think they may have something. Take this case for an instance. One day when playing the game he made a very good shot on to the green, and, ever ready to draw a moral from the game of golf which would apply to the greater game of life, turned to his companions and said: "Waste of energy I regard as one of the wanton extravagances of this age. Rational conservation of energy and temperance in all things are what the American nation must learn to appreciate." Mr. Rockefeller is now seventy-five years of age, and he was nearly sixty before he first began to play. He became an enthusiast at once, and, as with most other men, his golf aggravated him, goaded him, tantalised him, and made him ambitious and determined. He began to find things out and to invent new ideas as rapidly as any of us have ever done. He said the game changed his life. Made him happy. Brought back his youth to him. His friends when they played with him declared that he was not a cantankerous old man, but a really charming fellow. Golf was doing him good. It was making a new man of him, as it does of all others. But he did not get on at it as quickly as he thought he ought to do. He found that there were rather more things to remember in a very short space of time when making his shot than he had ever had to remember before, and that for the first time in his life he was liable to forgetfulness on the most important occasions. Then he acted on the business man's principle of getting others to do things for him. He got others to do the remembering. For a time whenever he went to play a match he had three caddies attending on him; even now he generally has two. He employed them for other purposes than carrying clubs. When he was about to make a stroke No. 1 Caddie stepped up to him and said respectfully but firmly: "Slow back, Mr. Rockefeller, slow back!" He might otherwise have forgotten to take his club slowly back from the ball at the start of the swing. This adviser having moved away, Caddie No. 2 went forward and said: "Keep your eye on the ball, Mr. Rockefeller, keep your eye on the ball!" Then, in turn, Caddie No. 3 advanced and spoke warningly: "Do not press, Mr. Rockefeller, do not press!" So, reminded of the common faults, the Oil King made his stroke and did not commit them, but was guilty of several others, and realised a little sadly when the ball did not travel as it should that he needed a hundred caddies for warning, and not three. Still, there is some good sense in this method, and the man who made it a strict rule to say to himself always, just before a stroke, what Mr. Rockefeller hired the boys to say to him would make fewer bad shots than he does.

Mr. Rockefeller has a very nice course of his own on undulating land at Forest Hill, on the edge of Cleveland, Ohio, and there he has parties to play with him constantly. He is fond of cycling, and instead of walking after his ball when he has struck it, he takes his cycle on to the course with him, jumps on to it, and wheels himself along to the place from which the next shot must be made. By this means he not only saves much time, and gets more golf in an hour than we do, but considers that he derives more physical benefit from the combination than he would from golf and walking. More than this, he knows exactly how far he has hit the ball every time, for he counts the number of turns of the pedals he has to make in cycling from point to point, and calculates accordingly. He does not lose his temper when he makes a bad shot or a series of such, as some have suggested, but he is quite ecstatic when he makes a good one; and, despite his seventy-five years, has been known to leap high into the air when the result of his efforts has been specially good. He is a most thoughtful player, and takes the utmost care always to note effects and to try to attach causes to them. "Now gentlemen," he has said, "that was really a very good stroke that I made then. You observe that I am learning to make better use of my left arm. It was that Scotchman who told me of the trick, but somehow I have never been able to use it advantageously until now." He has a large number of clubs in his bag, including all the most usual implements, while two or three have been made according to his own special ideas. One of his caddies also carries a large sunshade to hold over him while playing when the weather is uncomfortably warm, and it is the duty of this boy also to give a hand at pushing the bicycle when the line to the hole is uphill and Mr. Rockefeller finds the pedalling too much for him unaided. So you see that there is nothing that is conventional about Mr. John D. Rockefeller and his golf. You would hardly expect it.

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Now for the public or municipal golf in America; it is one of the strong features of the game in the United States that impressed me most. The average player in Britain, where the municipal golf movement is making slow headway, may be surprised to know that there is such a thing across the Atlantic; let him understand, then, that public golf in America is far ahead of public golf in Britain. Some Americans of great golfing experience, not confined to their own country, have not hesitated to say that they will "make America the greatest golfing country in the world." If we disregard such a challenge, there are yet circumstances and forces in operation in America of which serious notice must be taken, and the first of them is this great movement that is progressing in favour of municipal golf. The whole vast country is taking to it. The leaders of the people are appreciating the necessity of it and preaching it. They say that the times are desperately strenuous, that an antidote is needed, an ideal relaxation for body and nerves, a perfect recreation and diversion, and that, having tried everything and thought of other possibilities, they have come firmly and decisively to the conclusion that golf is the only recreation that meets the requirements of the times. Therefore they say that it must be provided for everybody, for the "common people," and given to them absolutely free with every inducement put forward for them to play it. The result is that public golf in America is already advanced to such a state as is almost incredible to those who have not seen it there. I have seen it. In New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Louisville, Milwaukee, Elgin, Toledo, and a host of the smaller places, there are good public courses. In the large cities there are often two or three. Chicago has now three and a fourth was being made when I was there last, a fine long course in the Marquette Park. Two of the existing courses are in the Jackson Park, one being eighteen holes and the other nine. The third is in Garfield Park. The full-sized course in Jackson Park is quite an excellent thing. The turf and the putting greens are well tended, the views are pleasant, and the play is absolutely free to all who obtain the necessary permit from the Parks Commissioners. The regular player may have the use of locker and dressing-rooms in the pavilion, and good meals may be obtained at a reasonable cost. How shall we wonder then that the Americans take kindly to this game and are becoming overwhelmingly enthusiastic at it, or that more than a hundred thousand games are played on one single course at Jackson Park alone in the course of a year? Though for the best part of the winter there is snow on the ground and play is impossible 105,000 games were played on the long course at Jackson Park during 1912 up to the beginning of October, and the news just reaches me that on one day at the very beginning of this season of 1914 nearly 900 tickets were given out! On a fine morning in the summer there will often be a little crowd of players waiting at the first tee for their turn to start at the dawn of day, and as many as two hundred have been counted there at seven o'clock in the morning. Having finished their game on ordinary mornings these people go off to their work, and they "hustle" all the more for the shots that they have played and hope to play again before the falling of the night. It is the same in the Franklin Park at Boston, in Van Cortlandt Park in New York, and everywhere. In this matter these Americans have sense. If public golf in England is ever to be a good and useful thing we must do as the Americans do, and if we do not the people will be the poorer, and we shall be sorry. Corporations must provide free golf, and they must be satisfied with the good done to the people, and not take the narrow view that the balance-sheet must show a direct profit apart from the indirect one that is certain. They must also put their courses in central and convenient places where people will be attracted to them, and which will not take the greater part of the time available to reach them. The game must be played in central parks which will then become more useful than they have ever been so far, and for the first time will be a real joy to the people who pay for them. I may be an enthusiast in golf, but I have gone deeply into this matter and studied it in its every bearing, and I know that I am right.

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And the Americans are gaining in another matter--they are bringing their young boys into the game. I have been to preparatory schools where they have their own little courses and their school championships. The boys like it, the masters encourage it, and the grown-up players admire the youngsters' enthusiasm. This is the way that "prodigies" are produced. In England we do not encourage the boys to play golf. The head-masters of schools say that it is a selfish game and that it is bad for them. I wonder how much these principals have thought of the moral qualities that must exist in the good golfer who knows how to play a losing match and perhaps save it, and how long in real argument before an impartial tribunal the contention would hold that it would be better for the young boy to stand for hours in the deep field at cricket on a hot summer's day than for him to learn to play golf and learn to keep a tight hold of himself when the whole scheme of things might seem to be breaking up. Cricket and football are great games, and they are splendid things for boys, but that golf is inferior to them in what it does for character I deny, and if the comparison is pressed the golfers with me can put forward an invincible case. Anyhow the fact is there that young America is getting golf and young England is not, and that will make a difference some time some way.