~ CHAPTER 4. ~

On Links—Style.

There is a recognized broad division of golf links into seaside and inland. Indeed the term “links” is only applicable in strictness to those sandy stretches by the sea on which the grass grows so short and close that it looks as if it had been arranged for the special purpose of giving the golfer a well-lying ball. The seaside links, therefore, by reason of this shortness of the grass, and also as affording those sand bunkers which make the best of all golfing hazards, are considered to be in a higher class than the inland links--or greens, as the latter or better named.  Men who habitually play by the sea are accustomed to speak with some scorn of their less lucky brethren whose fortunes compel them to enjoy the substitute for the game on inland greens. Nevertheless some of us manage to enjoy our inland game very much, in their despite.  And there is this advantage of playing habitually on an inland green, where the soil gets baked as hard as a brick by the sun and is sloppy and covered with wormcasts in the wet, that when you come, after such experience, to play on a real seaside course, where none of these abominable things occur, the game appears not only infinitely more delightful but infinitely more easy. It is more easy—the iron goes under the ball, in playing the approaches, with a kindliness it cannot show you on a baked surface; the putting green is not vexed with wormcasts; and your ball does not become coated with mud.

NATURAL QUALITIES OF GOOD LINKS.

All the first-rate seaside courses are quite obviously the result of the same natural agencies. Always they have been made by what a golfer with a little knowledge once spoke of as “adipose,” but is better called “alluvial,” deposit. They are all at the debouchment of a river into the sea, and their soil is the joint product of the river’s washings down and the sea’s silting up.  That is to say it is a mixture of sand and loam, with the sand in preponderance.  On such soil and such formation are the links of St. Andrews, Prestwick, Carnoustie, Montrose, Naim, and many others in Scotland. Westward Ho!, Hoylake, Sandwich, Felixtowne, Great Yarmouth, and many more in England; Portrush and Newcastle in Ireland; and if one were to give a man advice on comparatively uknown country, how he should set about finding suitable spots for golf links, the advice would be that he should get such a map as would show him where the rivers debouched into the sea, and should study those spots, and those only, neglecting what was between. He would not go far amiss.

Unfortunately it is not given to all of us to have within access a links of this right royal quality. It behooves us then to make the best-shift and subtitute what we can. And the second best quality of ground to that of sandy links is, no doubt, down land. Here the grass grows close and short, though not so closely and shortly as on the links.  Nevertheless it will serve to give a pretty good lie. But the soil is loam or clayey—never, hardly at all, sandy. It is not in the formation that it should have much admixture of sand. Also the worms work in it, though not with the activity they display on lowland soils. Neither are the bunkers of sand. The best we can hope for is a chalk pit or quarry pit; a sand pit is of unusual occurrence, and such a blessed reminder of better things elsewhere that the golfer rejoices to be in it. Of such nature are the greens of Minchinhampton, of Stinchombe, of Eastbourne, of Winchester, of Malvern—their name is really legion.  They make good golf; but the chalky soils grow terribly greasy in wet weather.

In the neighbourhood of London most of the courses are on undeniable clay, with all its disadvantages. Nevertheless good golf is found on Wimbledon Common, on Blackheath, at Mitcham, Chorleywood, Furzedown, and other places. Curiously enough the two greens at Richmond, namely, the course of the Richmond Club in Sudbrook Park, and the course of the Mid Surrey Club in the Old Deer Park, have some of the qualities of a seaside links. The soil has a deal of sand in it, and the bunkers have actual undeniable sand. The reason of this strange phenomenon so far inland is, no doubt, that the formation is rather similar to that which produced the seaside links. These two greens lie low down in the valley of the Thames, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the river, at some remote day, overflowed all this low ground at high tide, and, ebbing, would naturally leave a deposit of sand similar to that found in the lands formed by alluvial deposit. Even now, in exceptional tides and floods, some of the lower holes in the Old Deer Park are apt to lie under water. Yet these greens do not grow quite the same kind of short and crisp grass as we find on the true links ground by the sea. They require a deal of mowing in the summer time, and of course their hazards, of which elm trees form the chief part, do not compare, for the golfer’s purpose, with those of seaside links.

ARRANGEMENTS OF LINKS.

Links, whether seaside or inland, have, of course, other qualities and merits than those that depend on the nature of the soil, although this is the most important consideration of all. Nature, however, is responsible for this. The other qualities depend more on the work and artifice of man. No green is really a good one unless its lengths are good.  This does not merely mean that the total measurement of its eighteen holes should be of such and such a distance, or even that it should have eighteen holes at all. Eighteen is the number that was set in fashion by the example of our Royal and Ancient links at St. Andrews, and it has been found to suit men’s convenience, one round of eighteen holes fairly filling up the interval between breakfast and luncheon, and another round taking a man well on towards the evening, and giving him a good day’s exercise. But the important point is not the total distance, but the distances between the holes, or rather from tee to hole, in each case. There is a certain more or less stereotyped length of drive to which, or something like it, the majority of men attain when they have begun golf in their youth. Let us put this length of drive, with a fair run allowed, at 180 yards. One hundred eighty yards, then, is a good length for a hole, so is 360, and so is 540—longer than this you will not need them. These are good lengths, because an ordinary first-class driver should be able to reach the first in one, the second in two, and the third in three shots. This at least is the ideal at which he will aim, and it is quite a feasible one. If he plays these shots perfectly he will have a distinct advantage over an opponent who has played any one of the strokes imperfectly. But if on the other hand the holes had not been arranged in these lengths—if, for example, the second had been 270 yards, and the third 450 yards—in that case the man who had played two shots or three shots perfectly would have no advantage over the man who had played one shot at each hole imperfectly, provided he had played the other shots without a fault.  Where the holes are one full drive, or multiples of a full drive, in length, there the perfect play has its perfect reward; but where the holes are at the length of a drive and a half or two drives and a half apart, there the full advantage is not given to perfect play, because a man who has played one stroke faultily but the rest well, can recover his error and so be on the green in the same number as a man who has made no mistake at all. This will show what is meant by a course of good distances.

There are other qualities and merits too. The quality of the lies through the green make a vast difference to the quality of the golf as a whole; but this is rather dependent upon the nature of the soil than on man’s arrangements—though the latter, of course, must be adapted to improving the raw material that nature has supplied. But besides this a deal depends on the good arrangement of the hazards, which should be situated so that a fairly long and straight drive from the tee shall clear them all and find a fair lie for the ball to rest on. Similarly, at the long holes, the hazards for the second and third shots should be similarly disposed. No shot should be without its hazard, for it is these that make the interest of the game; nor, again, should any hazard be too desperately difficult of negotiation, otherwise the golf will cease to be a pleasure.

And besides the hazards through the green, the disposition of those that guard the putting green is worthy of the best attention of those that have in hand the management of the course. The hazards should be arranged with due consideration to the nature of the shot by which the hole will be approached.  If it is likely that the iron or mashie will be the approaching club (for, after all, it is not possible in every instance to follow out that heroic counsel of making the distances multiples of the full drive), in that case the hazard which should lie before the hole may be a great deal nearer up to the hole than if the green were to be approached by a full shot, which would be likely to pitch the ball so that it would of necessity run a deal further than off the iron, and so would overrun the hole.  In a word, it should be the study of the links-scape gardener to lay out his links in such a way as to make the golf as difficult as possible, consistently with giving the reasonably well-played shot a reasonable chance of achieving success.  It is the difficulty of the game that makes its interest, but the golfer is a poor human being, and must not be asked to do miracles or conjuring tricks.

ON STYLE.

Certainly some of those who address themselves to the business of playing golf adopt styles so singular and attitudes so contorted that we might well imagine them about to perform a conjuring trick at the least. No doubt there is a division to be made as broad as that between seaside and inland links, between seaside and inland links, between good styles and bad; nevertheless we do see men playing golf, and playing it well, in styles so strange and various that one is sometimes inclined to think style cannot matter.  The truth is that we need perhaps to rearrange our notions of what constitutes the good style and what the bad. Good style is not altogether a matter of graceful attitudes, nor is bad style expressed by exaggerated crooks of the elbow or bending of the legs.  To get our definitions right and clear in this matter we must go back to the very ultimate principles of the golfing swing--must recall to mind that its essential feature ws the movement of the club-head in the line of flight of the ball, combined with sufficient speed at the moment of its impact on the ball. If these conditions are fulfilled by this swing or the other, no matter whether it be “off the left left” or “the right,” no matter how singular in appearance and how ungraceful to the eye of the artist the attitude in which that swing was perpetrated, it is impossible for us to say that the swing and the style are bad. And equally if we see a man in all the attitudes of Apollo, drawing his club across the ball’s line of flight at the moment of impact, or checking and jerking the swing at all so that the speed is not communicated just at the right instant to the club-head, then, in spite of all the graces, we may call that style rank bad. Nothing succeeds like success, and if the style be successful in sending the ball far and in the direction wished it will not do for us to quarrel with it.

But—there is always a “but”—grace means ease and naturalness. And when we see a style that is successful, so that we are forbidden to call it bad, and yet a style that is forced, painful, lacking in grace, we may say of that style this: That though it be fairly successful in the present, while the player is young, and his muscles, though strained into unkindly postures, will obey his eye, yet when he loses the first freshness of youth he is likely to find his distorted style a handicap to him.  It is, again, the old story that the well-made and well-moving horse will outlast another less well made and well moving—will continue to keep up his paces till a green old age, because he accomplishes his work easily and without effort. The more clumsy mover may keep beside him while both are in their youth, but the clumsy fellow is wearing himself out, while the other is going easily and keeping himself fresh for his old age. It is not otherwise with the golfer: the strained and unnatural style may answer while the player is in the full vigour and suppleness of youth, but when the muscles grow stiff and the first keenness of eye leaves him, he will find himself losing his form while the more easily playing rival keeps his game for years.

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