MORE THAN A GAME

Evening Post, Issue 113, 10 November 1930, Page 17

MORE THAN A GAME

GOLF IN SCOTLAND

"A SOLEMN EXERCISE"

WONDERFUL COUKSES

Sandy Herd thinks that Britain lost the AValker Cup because of .their methods of selecting tho team. Sandy swears that a team of amateurs to beat tho American team could have been found aniong the workiugmen's golf clubs of Scotland. In other words, Bobby Jones and the rest of the Walker Cup team could have been reI pulsed at Sandwich last May by eight coal miners from Lanarkshire, with a Glasgow taxi driver in reserve, says the i"Now York Times." This is a most cruel and unusual idea. Tho only explanation of how it could have occurred Ito an otherwise kindly and likable ! golfer is that Sandy is himself-a Scot ; and Scotland is the ono country in which golf Still leads the simple life.: There are, of course,, other countries than Scotland in which workingmen play golf," but only as a novelty of comparatively recent origin. As the Scots see it, what happened when the rest of tbo world suddenly took up their game forty or fifty years ago- was that somebody made a mess of his drive. When the first foreigner teed up in Scotland- and drove the little Scottish ball to the ends of tho earth, what he did was to bunker it among tho upper and upper middle classes abroad, and there it-has remainod ever since. All the complicated and expensive business of club dueg, initiation fees, red umbrellas, chamois waistcoats, dollar nassaus, and two-bits-a-hole bets—all this upper and upper middle-class business —is no more than a bit of rough country in which,the wee white ba' has got itself bunkered abroad. ' ; PENNY A ROUND. This is as the Scots see it. There are, of course, plus-fours and side bets in Scottish golf, but that is far from the whole story. The great thing to remember about , golf in Scotland is that James 11. chose an Edinburgh shoemaker to' be his partner on the Leith links in 1681, and Scottish shoemakers have been going down to the sea wi J ever since. In this conjunction of golf and shoemakers the Scots see nothing \ incongruous. Indeed, the difficulty in trying to get a Scot to take a reasonable view of golf lies in the fact that the ordinary Scot is himself a shoemaker playing his golf at a penny a round. How can you explain to such a man that the use of overalls on a golf course is hardly the usual thing, to say the very least? How can you make him see that tha glory of golf has been its* brightening of the stubborn gloom of civilian male attire- with the variegated verdure of Lossiemouth plaids* Donegal woollens, and smoked elk shoes —a glory to which no other game has over attained? It is probable that the ordinary Scot, if you were to put such a proposition to him, would have no idea what ytfu were talking about. Or, if a faint" glimmer of your meaning were to reach him, you would be met with a denial that golf is a game at all, and if you have seen the tombstones in the churchyard of St. Andrew's Cathedral and have noted the number of golfers' who have taken their clubs with them into the next world, it would be difficult for you not to/ agree. :..:.''..■ EVERYONE'S BUSINESS. : The fact is "that* tlio'Scots are a solemn people, and Scottish golf, like Scottish theology, is a solemn exercise. You may discuss its doctrine and dogma just as you discuss the doctrine and dogma of the kirk. You may spend a Scottish Sabbath in the Imperial's lounge at e ßt. Andrew's arguing heatedly as to whether the second hole on the old course was • the result of direct or indirect inspiration. But tho main srecepts of golf you must accept without question, and it is the very first of its precepts that golf, like the kirk, is th.o business of every immortal soul. Hence tho universality of Scottish golf. It is an exerciso wide open to everybody—clerks, professional men, working men, tradesmen. A few are members of expensive clubs with -private links of their own."' More are ratepayers entitled, with their wives and children, to freo golf on their burgh links. Most of them shoulder their own clubs and play on public links at a shilling or sixpence, or even a penny a round. It is hopeless to try to explain to a' Scot that golf at a penny a round is hardly fair to poor millionaires in foreign countries, who sometimes have to spend 5000 dollars a year on club dues alone. Oil tho other hand, it is equally hopeless to try to disregard the Scots in these matters, for Scotland as tho pulpit from which tho world-wide crusade of golf has boon preached. OPEN TO ALL. Having already converted tho world's upper and upper middle classes to golf, the Scots, being inveterate preachers, are now aiming at the conversion of its lower classes. Already they have begun to impose working men's golf on England. Tho pew municipal courses in England ard open to everybody, aud in a few cases private clubs have thrown open their courses to the working men of the neighbourhood at certain fixed hours evory week. So it ia now possible in some places foi' an English working man to shoulder his two or three clubs and hack his way around a good course at a modest expense. The English take a great deal of quiet pride in this, for it shows what a genius they have- for swapping horses in midstream without getting their feet wet. The whole course of English history is a series of these delicate and difficult, adjustments. In Scotland it is different. Onco upon a timo an Englishman failed to hole his putt on- a Scottish links and complained to his caddio that "no gentleman would have asked mo to hole a thing like that." "Maybe so," said his caddie, "but ye see we're nao gontlemen here. Wc'xo juist'gowfers." Tho point of this entirely true story is the fact .that tho caddio did not smile. His expression did not change by the breadth of a singlo whisker. It is true that ho was a St. Andrew's caddie, and tho caddies of St. Andrews arc perhaps the most terrifying caddies in all Scotland. Ho was so old that you had only to train ivy over him to convert, him into a grand Caledonian ruin.l. But in his dour solemnity he was merely typical of the Scots. It must not be assumed, of course, that"tho caddies of St. Andrews arc incapable of humour. Far from it. It is. their withering, devastating. irony which makes them so terrifying. TRIFLING. Mere harmless levity is not tho meat on which these venerable giants have been nurtured. How tho rest of the world fan bring itself to refer to golf in. a spirit of weak frivolity no Scot ever understands. Most Scots havo heard that jokes havo sometimes been made on the subject of golf in foreign countries and that some of these jokes -;—the golf widow, tho broken club, tho lost .ball—havo attained a considerable age and a wide currency. Some Scots havo even seen a recent film in which a piece of tanglefoot flypaper blows across the green just as a rich American golfer, attired in the- • most reckless plaids, is on the point of driving. The

flypaper sticks to his toed ball, the ball is disentangled and teed up again, and the golfer drives ..<ffE with .a tremendous swipe. Tho ball is then completely lost sight of until somebody . comes along with sufficient presence of mind to find it sticking to the head of the club. ' •. ■ . . .' . -' ' : Tho Scots understand that this kind of trifling is regarded in. foreign countries as comic., In .connection with _a mere game, tennis, for, example, it is possible that they might be able to understand .it, but in ■ connection ■'with" an exerciso which Bias "the right to do-, scribe itself as royal and .ancient it seems to the' Scot to be as unthiukablo as a. comic.sermon in the kirk. ■ .. ■ ..'. :. ; " UNTAMED.■■-< ; :;■'■; It is hopeless to try to! change such people.', For better or worse, you have to tako them as; they are v You may grumble at thecrowds on ttieir links and if you refrain from grumbling at their caddies it is only because these dominating ancients have frightened you out of your slender wits. Scottish caddies are like Scottish preachers. You may like them or you-may .not. ..They .are frequently great .men arid-, they, ;are sometimes great nuisances. Which they prove, to be depends less on your game than on whether : yom prove to bo "mindfu 1 •' when your game is ended. The trouble is that the tipping system is a thing to which no. Scot should ever bo exposed. An English caddie, in- the presence of a tip, rarely forgets tho humble placo in, the hierarchy of English life to which it has pleased Heaven to assign.him.- But who,.b'as ever;seen a.humble Scot? The, Scots have never known tho pld and inborn restraints of feudalism and it is- unlikely that the terrible Scottish caddie will ever be tamed as long as the tipping system endures on Scottish, links. Tho ordinary Scottish golfer, of course, makes no attempt to copo with bis brother Scots in the caddies' paddock. Ho caddies for himself. . GREAT COURSES. "When you approach the subject of the links themselves, such: caviling as you may do at some aspects of Scottish golf dies away into an awed bush. _ It is by virtue of its wonderful old links, with their soft turf, their sand dunes, and the open sea creaming on the beaches beyond, that Scotland is the Mecca of golf. It is from such surroundings, that the gospel of golf has been carried to the uttermost ends of the earth, for here the faith burns at white heat. ...■'■ ■ It is difficult to.hit upon any handy grouping which will include, all the great links of Scotland, for the whole country is edged with an almost continuous chain of fine links. No more wonderful turf or more ideal Burroundings are to be found anywhere. But its world-famous links group themselves almost automatically around three centres. St. Andrews on the Pifeshire coast is, off course, a whole group in itself, with lesser' satellites lying up and down the shore to north and south of it. North Berwick, on the East Lothian coast is the centre of a second group, which includes Muirfield, one of the finest of them all. And then, over'on. the west coast, where tho turf is softer and more carpetlike, the coast of Ayrshire is the Golf Coast itself. Most golfers regard Prestwick on the Ayrshire coast as the most wonderful natural seaside course in the world, but there is less big golf played there now than formerly, because the crowds that follow championship matches arc now so big: that no stewards could handle . them at the narrow parts of ■• the course;':- This crouping of Scotland's .most famous links around St. Andrews,.. North Berwick, and Prestwick omits the inland courses, and two of these, the Glenoagles courses, carved out of wild moorland, and the Braid Hills, courses at Edinburgh, must not be omitted under any circumstances. Braid Hills, the Wolf for goats" course-, oil forty years ago, is to-day the most famous.municipal course anywhere in: the world, and it would probably be true to describe it also as the world's most popular course. .^ . '■; '