Sporting Aspects
Solid or Brilliant ?
By BERNARD DARWIN AGOOD many years ago a friend and I were smoking a last pipe over the fire after a winter day's golf when some demon flying over the house, and clearly bent on shortening our night's rest, put into the head of one of us a subject for discussion: if Providence would confer on us its richest gifts should we choose to play golf like James Braid or like J. H. Taylor ? Should we prefer the almost mono- tonous accuracy of Taylor, that accuracy which had once been said to know no hazards but the guide flags, or the " divine fury " of Braid, with its rather greater power and also its slightly greater possibility of error? To those who never saw these two truly great players, I should perhaps add that the difference was in a sense but a small one, for heaven knows Braid was straight enough save for a very, Very occasional hook, and Taylor hit the ball hard enough with that vindictive little grunt of his. Still a distinction there was, and the two might be taken as two of the supreme examples in golf of the two schools, such as exist in all games, on the one side the dashing and brilliant, on the other the solid and unerring. I imagine that in a general way it is the dashing that get the popular vote, and indeed if I watch cricket nowadays, whether in real life or on television, and come in for a period of strictly defensive batting, however well justified by the state °1 the match, I am inclined to follow Mr. Pickwick's advice in the case of two mobs and " shout with the largest." Then, however, I recall that perhaps the highest felicity I ever enjoyed at a cricket match was in seeing, and alas ! only that °rice in my life, an innings by Arthur Shrewsbury. In his leisurely mastery of the bowling, too careful to be called contemptuons, but so infinitely far removed from any possi- bility of getting out, or even of making a not quite perfect stroke, this seemed to my young eyes the completely godlike batsman, and the impression is still strong upon me after all these years. Wholly flawless and, as some philistines may think it, tiresome accuracy is the quality that has always fascinated me. So my role in this argument before the dying fire was clear: I was on Taylor's side, and my friend was as decisively °n• Braid's; so then we were bound to be at it hammer and tongs. We could come to no conclusion save that we only Wished we had half the complaint of either champion, and, I had actually induced my opponent to take his chamber candlestick when in a moment of insanity I said that once upon a time we might have had the same sort of discussion about John Ball or Freddie Tait. He had never seen them —he was very young indeed—and wanted to know all about them, and there was I, in for it again. John Ball was appal- lingly straight, and wore his enemies down by straightness, more than by any other of his tremendous qualities. I was always told that I was too young to have seen the greatest John Ball, capable of some terrific and irresistible strokes. When I knew him, it was accuracy, especially in a wind, that was his deadliest weapon. Freddie Tait, on the other hand, Was a player of immense capacity both for error and recovery.
him as a slashing, slogging hitter are utterly wrong. There was something gentle and almost caressing in his approach to the ball, but on his crooked days' he could nevertheless be very crooked. He was a kind of Mark Tapley among golfers in that he apparently wanted a state of things in which there Would be a real credit in being jolly and coming out strong. His Power of making prodigious shots when all seemed lost drove his enemies to despair. It was undoubtedly magnificent, but John Ball going like an arrow through the wind down the very middle of the course was the man not merely for my money but for my exquisite satisfaction. I like my heroes to be machine-like, but the machinery must be perfectly oiled, lovely and precise. Accuracy does not consist wholly in the avoidance of mistake, perhaps by a narrow margin and by mere pusillanimous caution. Each stroke must be flawless in itself, and it must be made not only in commonplace but, if need be, in heroic circumstances. There was a certain second shot of Taylor's up to the Briars green at Hoylake—he won that Championship by the length of the street—which was at once the most accurate and the most heroic I ever saw. It was a full cleek shot in the teeth of a hurricane; the ball knocked the flag out of the hole and lay stone dead for a three.
Accuracy on that immortal scale' naturally demands. methqd of the highest quality, not necessarily beauty of style, though I always enjoyed watching J. H. hit the ball more perhaps than anyone else, but solidity and firmness and immobility in the highest degree. I think it wants also a certain quality of mind and a real hatred of error for its own sake. 1 have heard. J. H. say of one who had been in earlier days an Open Champion, " He was a bad player, sir ".' say it with all tho emphasis of the shaken head of which he is capable. The poor man had had a tendency to hook so great as to bo criminal.
Another example of contrast comes to me from a game about which I know perhaps too little. However, I will tak the risk and name those two illustrious Frenchmen whom used once to watch spell-bound at Wimbledon—Borotra an Lacoste. The crowd adored—and, for that matter, still adores —Borotra, nor can anyone wonder at it, for not only was he a superlatively good player, but he was the best fun in tho world; he was ever leaping, dancing, grinning, full of good humour, a piece of quicksilver running about the court, retrieving a ball that no one else could be expected to reach, retrieving a mistake that no one expected him to make. But it was rather Lacoste, who retired all too young from the scene of his triumphs, that fascinated me. Here was somebody who had the great golfing virtue of doing the same thing over an over again and doing it, as far as the ignorant might judge, in the perfectly right way. And he did it, as I recall him, with no shade of expression flitting across his countenance, no matter what occurred. And yet, perhaps it would be wrong to call him expressionless, for there was something of the agreeably saturnine. In this matter of going on for ever and ever, and at thp same time concealing all emotion, the billiard-players are surely in a class by themselves. No other body of men can, don so impenetrable a mask. I have just been looking at Thackeray's picture in Vanity Fair of Rawdon Crawley playing billiards, puffing a vast cigar with a look of cheerful venom on his face, while two shady persons hi the background are obviously telling each other in whispers that he is the man to back. Rawdon " from being a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a consummate master of billiards " who would wait till the bets were against him before making " some prodigious hits which would restore the battle." Doubtless he was formidable, but he has not the quiet, professional air : he look the great amateur. Was there ever a professional who ha not that silent, inscrutable look, this, as it' is elegantly calk ,, " dead pan " face? The only one I can think of in a limited' experience was Inman, once so famous in Tom Webster's caricatures. He seemed, for all his skill, to play more like an inspired amateur than did his victims, and some shadow of discontent, some slight gleam of unhallowed satisfaction would pass for an instant across his features like a breath across A mirror. They all do the same thing over and over again, but about him there seemed now and again something almost human.
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