GOLF.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 8, 22 February 1908, Page 15

GOLF.

Human Nature in Golf.

(By

Anthony Spalding.)

Golf has more of human nature in it than all other games put together—with its pangs and blisses, its triumphs and defeats; a bewildering, inextricable mass of successes, confusion, delusions, and absurdities covering the whole field of life. There is in it the polarity of light and darkness. The golfer alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth. To-day he is in a whirlwind of chaotic darkness, and to-morrow the glorious light of a better understanding breaks upon him, and he discovers that the centre of it all is not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something. Hundreds of thousands of people play, and few play really well. Most of them are still in the strait-waistcoat of perplexity; they worship the game with the hopeless devotion of one who battles for a hopeless cause. One of the peculiarities of golf is that it stops the pores of humour, and keeps a man clogged with earnestness. There is not one among the great army of goffers who has not experienced an occasional day when he seemed to be one of the favoured of heaven, and the next has felt he was exposed to its satire. Some of us niay have gone home, having played each shot just as we wished the ball to go, and comfortably reflected that we have now come into our rightful kingdom, and perhaps have entertained thoughts of attaining some prominence at the next amateur championship. Such is pur internal and personal subjective diorama, seen for one brief evening on the background of our own consciousness, and obliterated the next day into black nonentity by failures in actual play. A CHECK ON PRIMAL ELEMENTS. The clash between fact and fancy is merciless. There was the hopeful start, succeeded by early disappointment, which developed into a, continuous and unequal struggle against fate, and the final dismantling of ambition. it was like being stabbed with an icicle. Thus it will be understood that golf checks the primal elements of impulsiveness, vanity, and ambition. And when man is in this morose and material condition, with the pet feathers of his vanity all rutiled, he is a ready prey to the theorist whom one meets in every club-house. The unhappy fellow may be as familiar with the wreck of each day’s hopes as with the diurnal setting of the sun, and may have to listen to the story of others’ failures, which sound like the requiem of his own, but let him beware of the man with a theory, the man who is clever at dynamics, but usually a fool at golf. lie rivals the Greek sirens in their powers of fascination and destruction. Theory is balm to the mind which feels that it has been outraged by personal failure. It tends to fortify error. It is the last infirmity of the golfer’s mind, and theie is an inseperable fraternity between theory and incapacity. To accept what every humorist happens to tell you is not only foolish, but fatal to one’s chance of overcoming faults. It reminds one of the man in Aesop’s Fables, who pulled out his grey hairs to please his young wife, and his black hairs to please his old wife. To fix upon the causes which lead to variation in play is very difficult —it may be a feeling of over-anxiety, unreasoning but irresistible nervousness or a want of sympathy with one’s partner—but though the influence, which has a disturbing effect, may be subtle, it is none the legs'real in its working. It is the common heritage of all. During the last championship Braid was quite unable to play his game, but the professional regains his form with greater case than loss-skilled players, and, moreover, is not so likely to lose it. The period pf inepitude is accompanied by a fit,-of. distracting despondency. Man is afflicted with all the golfing diseases necehsgry to make up a totally morbid state. , He ,i$ almost ashamed to think how- faiT. his worst efforts fall below his best: l,ike the Saints who dream of heaven Tit their earthly sorrows, he muses ovisr what might-have been, of the shots

missed, the chances that slipped by, and in the gloom he sees the portraiture of his early trial, and failures thrown upon an enormous camera obscura shadow. FORM A PERISHABLE PARADISE. But in his discomfiture he must not forget that variation in skill is not an unnatural or unhealthy sign. To be brought down from his high state of perfection and to find that lie has no power to check his lower instincts in the exercise of their wicked will at least teach the lesson that form is a perishable paradise. Though perhaps dejected in mind, he should not remain devoid of counsel. Having lost the key, and being out of tune, if wise ho will seek the services of the professional to point out the fault. The man who has the gift of visualising movement can readily regain his lost skill, whereas his less fortunate brother will be sorely confused with the ferment of instruction and caution. The attraction of the great exponents of the game consists in the almost supernatural control they exercise over the ball, whether it is lying well or ill. They have the happy touch, that magnetic thing which defies analysis, but which is a very evident fact none the less; the gift of making us feel that there are no such things as difficulties in golf. The movement of their arms and the swing of their clubs arc as natural to them as the act of walking. Their skill is waterproof against all the perplexing trials which are rained down upon them. For our comfort let us remember that these men have spent many weary days and months in weaning themselves from evil tendencies, and behind the easy, graceful style so fascinating to wateh, each stroke marks a place where the spur of perseverance has been driven in. The golfer’s first gift is that he have adaptability enough. The moulding of his gift will be accompanied by great disappointments, but great golfers are only made after passing through great tribulation. Shakespeare is accounted greater than Dante because he not only sorrowed but triumphed over his sorrows. Because they do not triumph, many golfers, like Dante, live in a state of grief. ‘ Let me not be misunderstood. None of the golfer’s grief dies unspoken. The game affords unending scope for the fine, free boiling British rage. Saturday on the links, with the moanings and cursing— n6w loud; now soft—may be likened to a gale at sea. The veriest duffer can say the last thing on adverse circumstances and hostile environment, and some say it in language which renders them unfit for human companionship. AN UNNATURAL CRAVING. Many golfers live in a perpetual lack of something, and when they get it they soon contrive to find something more to hanker for. It is this restless craving for golfing distinction for which Nature has not intended them that ends in personal discomfiture. Holmes says that conceit is to human character what salt is to the ocean: it keeps it sweet and renders it endurable. A man without ambition is like a monkey without a tail, unnatural and incomplete, says another writer. To seek to acquire this higher skill is a natural aspiration, and we might as well blame a dog for loving liver, or a eat for believing that Heaven is milk, as censure one for trying to conquer w hat is amiss in him. One would not smother these inpulses, for when one has lost all his Conceit and all his allusions he will soon be reduced to a state of utter incapacity and dismalness. But what nonsense we hear in the club-house from men who affect form and talk of playing shots that only masters can successfully make, when, aS a fact, they are very indifferent exponents of the simplest shots! They are like a boy trying to smoke a pipe when he ought to be blowing bubbles. If the unhappy golfer would only recognise that all his geese are not swans, and determine to tear aside the veil that hides his limitations, the game would become much sweeter to him. The acknowledgment of ineptitude for distinction, the resignation to sins he cannot overcome, a mind free from affectations, will bring great personal comfort. The recognition of personal limitations is one of the most blessed convictions that can enter his mind. The.burden of all his failures arising from defective effort is lifted from him, and falls, like Christian's pack, lit the loot of that Power which has denied him the pleasure of being a talented golfer.