Scottish Golf Hazards
" MEBBE ye'd better tak ycr niblick wi' ye when ye dee," said Andra to the Bishop. So the story, a story, of course, of Kirkcaldy, the late professional to the Royal and Ancient Club, goes. I Wilt not positively vouch for the Bishop but otherwise the yarn has the authentic ring, and Andra, quick and blunt of speech, would not have hesitated even in the face of the hierarchy. His comment was the offset to the Right Reverend gentleman's too obvious satisfaction in having got well out of Hell at St. Andrests.
That famous hunker is as essential to the story as Andra or the cleric. There would be no story without it, and I am prompted by the recollection to ask whether in the whole incalculable- area of the world's surface now occupied by golf there is any other bunker with anything like Hell's fame. There are, I admit, newspaper compositors who mis-set the name as Hill and sub-editors who let it go among the slips that pass in the night. To a golfer, -and especially a Scots golfer, the thing is almost incredible, almost criminal, because the Hill is at least three-quarters of a mile distant from Hell, the one at the High Hole in, the other.atlhe Long Hole in, and has nothing like the same notoriety.
- Deeds, not words, make a hole's reputation, though un- deniably in Hell's case the name was good if, at the time it was bestowed, -unwitting publicity. Events keep spinning its story down the years. There was Easterbrook, for example, in last year's Open who might have won the Cham- pionship but for his breakdown-at-the Long. Hole in. Yet I gathered in talk with an old St. Andrean .when I was at the Walker Cup match recently that even Heir is not the place it was. It used to be so deep, he told me, that in time of flood, you could have floated a fishing boat in it. Perhaps he exaggerated, but the fire engine has after heavy rain had to pump the. water out of the bunkers at St. Andrews. Hell is comparatively shallow. Hill is much smaller but has greater depth, -butthelame-ofthe-farnaer grows.: Well-known Scodigh hazards appear to have it pretty much their own way in golf literature and lore, and in the talk-of the modern golfer, English golf has no serious rivals even on the courses where the Championships are 'played. The contrast owes, in some part, to 'the " lane pedigree " of the better-known Scottish hazards. Even " Pandy of the old, now rather faded looking Musselburgh town links is still a name, but its great days are known only to the grey ghosts who mingle with the ratepayers having their- round today. The Maiden at Sandwich, now reduced to the superannuated role of lolling place for spectators, was once a great hazard but the Suez Canal on the same course or the muddy water that guards the last green at Westward Ho ! are obscure, un- known hazards compared with the Swilcan or the Pow or even the latest Scottish recruit to championship office, the Barry burn at Carnoustie.
The Cop at Hoylake is' the most familiar of the' English hazards and yet it has not the intimidatingly narrow look of Prestwick's first hole (with the railway all along the right) which somebody has described as ".driving up a drain-pipe." For every time the Cop is mentioned in club-house -talk Strath bunker or the famous Road at St. Andrews will be discussed many times, while Point Garry, where Johnny Laidlay once took I forget how many strokes among the rocks, though no man ever knew the old North Berwick links better, the Het Girdle and the Alps are all Scottish names 'to conjure with.
Incidents, tragic and heroic, associated with these and other holes and hazards, colourfully lace the story of British golf events. To parade the terrors and the possibilities of our famous hazards might to the lay eye look like ill-judged " Come to Scotland " . propaganda, but the golfer finds a fascination in living dangerously, and many an English and American golfer has come to these very Scottish holes and hazards inevitably. Like the snake who fixes the rabbit with his eye they get him sooner or later. I have written about only a few of our Scottish golf features, but they are quotable as showing the savour and the quality the game characteristic- ally has north of the ,Tweed. We ought prohablytto let the world know more about that. I said some time ago in a wireless talk that the Seots are the' strong silent men of golf— strong in their play, too silent about their woncle.rful natural
FRANK MORAN.
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