Compton Mackenzie
IREAD recently a confident statement that golf was brought to Scotland from Holland by Scots in the Dutch service during the seventeenth century. This is not in fact true. What these Scottish mercenaries did was to start a trade in Dutch golf-balls on such a scale that James I and VI prohibited their importation into Scotland because it was ,taking gold and silver out of the country and damaging the home-made article. No doubt golf was being played in Holland, but nearly two centuries earlier there was such a passion for it in Scotland that together with football it was forbidden on Sunday as an unprofitable sport because it was interfering with the archery practice on that day. Was Flodden lost on the links of St. Andrews and Leith ?
The earliest evidence we have of English interest in golf is when James Duke of York with John Paterson, a shoemaker; as his partner defeated two English noblemen in a match for a very large stake. The shoemaker with his share of the winnings built himself the house at 77 Canongate, Edinburgh, which is still known as 'Golfer's Land.'
Perhaps that expensive defeat of the two English noblemen in 1682 hindered the popularity of the game in England. Anyway, it was not until 1864 that the first English seaside golf club, the Royal North Devon, was founded at Westward Ho !, to be followed five years later by the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake. Yet for nearly another twenty years, golf remained in England an exotic game which people confused with polo. As for the United States golf was almost unknown there even by 1890. In the eleventh and last British edition of the Encycloptedia Britannica H. G. Hutchinson was writing of how golf "had 'caught on,' to use an American expression, in the United States."
It was possible for Punch some time in the Nineties to depict a golfer putting his bag of clubs on the rack of a railway-carriage and a small boy whispering to his mother, "What is that man for ? "
, I have a picture in the mind's eye of men in bright red coats on the green cliff slope below the lighthouse at Cromer and of hearing my nurse say that they had to wear those red coats because they were playing a dangerous game which oughtn't to be allowed. That was in the bright hot July of 1887. Red coats were compulsory in the interests of public ' safety on many links for a long time after that. The passer-by was supposed to see these diabolic scarlet figures approaching and hurry to take cover. By the way I wonder how the roadside notice Beware of blasting' is supposed to help the motorist if the explosion coincides with his passing.
Lord Balfour in the days when he was Mr. A. J. Balfour indulged the caricaturists by wearing what was called a polo collar (turned down) with a frock coat but even more by his predilection for golf and the opportunity this gave them of drawing him as a golfer in those curiously unbecoming breeches of the period. I believe that the majority of newspaper readers in England believed he was the only Member of Parliament who played the exotic 'game. I recall from the early Nineties his opening of the new links at Broadway. In the way that small boys have, I managed to squeeze myself right into the front of the small respectful crowd gathered to hear the Right Honourable Gentleman make his speech by the pavilion at the end of his round and I heard him say how much he had enjoyed his first experience of the game in the Cotswolds, which as it seemed to him combined the pleasures of mountain-climbing, deer-stalking and golf. which freshmen were expected to learn the game before they ventured to swing a club at Hinksey. That dingy expanse of wasteland surrounded by dreary little houses is now covered with the Nuffield works or other factories. I remember playing a game with Raymond Wavell, a fellow freshman, when both of us took well over 200 strokes for the round. Wavell's performance was surprisingly poor for a Wykehamist because in 1901 Winchester was about the only school in the country which encouraged boys (I should say ' men ' in this case) to .play golf in term time. I recall the gloomy prophecies that used to be made at that date about the destruction of University cricket by golf and when I look back at the last fifty years I wonder whether golf or the popular Press carries the heavier load of responsibility for the present state of the game.
In the Easter vacation of 1903 I went with Arthur Asquith and Guy Bonham-Carter—neither still with us—to Compiegne. We were all three made members of the Societe du Sport, the Secretary of which at that time was Fournier-Sarlovezo who twelve years later as Mayor of Compiegne would defy the invading Germans to the admiration and delight of all Europe.
Arthur Asquith and Guy Bonham-Carter were both good golfers : I was not. Staying in Compiegne and' a member of the Societe du Sport was Prince Faucigny de Lucinge, a florid man with a large red moustache, who had a passion for golf but was so bad a golfer that he could not find anybody to play on equal terms at five francs a hole. Fournier- Sarloveze urged my claims and almost every day the Prince and I played a round; bad golfer as I was I used to win about ten francs a day, which seemed a lot in those days. Alas, I was never again able to match myself against a golfer even less skilful than myself, and within a couple of years I abandoned golf for ever. My final stroke had at any rate the quality of surprise. It was late on an afternoon in January 1905 when the links near Burford on which we played in those days were sparsely covered with snow. I had been playing worse than usual, and that was very badly indeed. As we approached the little club pavilion I said, Now, If I could play this game I should be able to drive up to the-club-house." As I spoke I struck idly with my cleek at the ball, and then the miracle happened. The ball sped for a hundred yards like a bullet not merely up to the club-house but bang through one of the windows.
Some people might have been fired by this achievement to persevere with golf. I decided immediately that I should never hit another ball so hard and so straight, and that therefore I would never play golf again. To this resolve I adhered and since that cold louring dusk I have never played another round. I may have missed a great deal of pleasure but when I consider the amount of time I have saved I do not regret the resolve. The man who is never much good at games has a great deal to be thankful for because he is spared those intimations of mortality with which games so cruelly torment their devotees. I do not go creaking about, oppressed by the knowledge that my legs and arms and eyes are becoming less serviceable every year. I do not worry about exercising my body, because I can remain agreeably exercising my mind. Let me hasten to add that of course I am well aware of making the best of a bad job and must not be suspected of the least complacency in my attitude. Indeed; when I remember that my favourite heroine Mary Queen of Scots was devoted to golf I feel rather ashamed of myself. She was so fond of the game that she was seen playing it within a few days of the death of Darnley and thereby scandalized popular opinion.
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