A WORD AGAINST GOLF.
THE conquest of England by the specially Scotch game of Golf is now as complete as the conquest of Scotland by the specially English game of Football. Mr. Horace Hutchin- son, the leading literary exponent of the game, and Mr. John Ball, who, by carrying off the " open " championship a few weeks ago, vindicated his claim to be regarded as its most eminent practitioner, are both Englishmen, and as a rule play on English greens. Mr. Ball's victory is evidently looked upon in Scotland as a national defeat second only to that of Falkirk, and next year when the championship is contended for at St. Andrews, a great patriotic rally will be made in the hope of scoring a second Bannockburn. No doubt there will be ups and downs in the fortunes of this war as of every other. But the circumstance that England has not only been conquered by golf, but, in the person of Mr. Ball, has conquered it in turn, renders absolutely certain its nationalisation and spread on this side of the Sol- way. Englishmen, who lately discovered, alike to their delight and to their surprise, that their rural scenery is almost the finest in Europe, have also of late found out the long stretches of hitherto non-utilised turf in the vicinity of their coasts or on their inland plateaux, to be at least as well adapted to golf as Scotch " links." What has been done at Eastbourne in Sussex, at Sandwich in Kent, at Westward Ho in Devon, at Minehead in Somerset, at Hoylake in Cheshire, and at Seaton Carew in Yorkshire, may be done, and doubt- less will be done, in a thousand other equally suitable places before many years are over. Besides, the game is evidently adapted to the temperament of the average Englishman, even more than to the temperament of the average Scotch- man. The characteristic of the Englishman is coolness, exhibiting itself in good-humour, pliancy of limb, and ease of manner; the characteristic of the Scotchman is perfervidness, exhibiting itself in strenuosity, in enthusiasm, and in excess—of application to study, of absorption in money-making, and still (of a Saturday night and among working men) of drinking. In football, perfervidness finds an admirable vent. In golf, on the other hand, coolness is the first requisite. The chief advices dinned into the ear of the novice by his professional trainer, such as " Don't press," " Take it easy," and " Don't try for too much," are so many attempts to reduce coolness to practice. Besides, the science of golf-club making has been carried to such perfection, that the game can hardly be said
to be one of force at all. The distance to which a golf-ball can be driven depends upon the fullness of the swing given to
the club by which it is hit, and upon the weight of the lead in its head, not upon the strength of the arms that swing it. Englishmen are not more muscular than Scotchmen ; as a rule, indeed, they are not so muscular. But they take to athletic exercises which require not so much power of muscle as suppleness of joint, with greater readiness. In any case, they have taken to golf as they have taken of late to no other game, even lawn-tennis not excepted.
Now, therefore, seems the time to reckon the cost of
establishing golf as the national game for Englishmen. Its advantages, especially to middle-aged men and members of the too-bepitied "sedentary classes"—how it acts as a relief from work and worry, how it deprives a long walk of its dreariness, how it conduces to longevity, how it supplies a subject apart from politics to talk upon—have of late been chanted ad nauseam. Equal justice should now be done to its disadvantages. One of these has, indeed, been making itself heard of late, though all too faintly. The complaint is being muttered by the female members of English households, that the triumph of golf means the ruin of the autumn holiday. There will be no more trips to the Continent. The livelier seaside resorts at home, such as Brighton and Scarborough, the chief charm of which lies in gregariousness, will be deserted for small villages in the neighbourhood of the long stretches of turf which, as already said, are indispensable for the formation of golf-courses. These have no pier, no promenade, no band, no theatre, no concert- hall, no amusements, in the ordinary sense of the word. The men will no doubt be happy playing golf all day, and talking golf all evening. But what of the women and the children ? For them, and for two months on end, it is nothing but-
" Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland ! Oh, the barren, barren shore !" The complaint is a perfectly just one. Golf is an essentially selfish, or, at all events, self-absorbing game. Above all things, it is and ever must be a man's game. No doubt some girls of exceptional physique can be taught to play it passably. But taken altogether, it involves too much walking and too much exercise of a kind for which women are ill- adapted. Most golf-courses, too, now include what is termed " ladies' links." But golf, as played there, is allowed even by those who play it, to be but a miserable imitation or duodecimo edition of the game that is played on the ordinary course. In any case, it does not, like most indoor games, or like croquet and lawn-tennis, allow of easy conversation between the sexes while it is being played. On the contrary, on greens like St. Andrews, where the etiquette of golf is rigorously observed, talk is forbidden while strokes are in contemplation. The fact is unquestionable that the triumph of golf in England means a reaction against the tendency— the profitable tendency, as it seemed—of recent years to bring the sexes together in all outdoor pleasures.
The supreme advantage of golf to men of middle age is that for the time being it completely absorbs all their energies of brain and body. But what constitutes its advantage to such, makes it a grave danger to lads in their teens. The reign of athletics in England, which shows no signs of coming to an end, may have been regarded in too Cassandra-like a spirit by Mr. Herbert Spencer. But it is notorious that the heads of business houses groan at the time of their young men being so cut up by "these confounded cricket-matches," and University examiners as a rule would, if they could, frown down boating. But the enthusiasm for golf, once it fastens on a young man, is infinitely more seductive and demoralising than the enthusiasm for any other game. There is a season for cricket, for football, for boating. Out of that season, the young man is almost compelled to stick to his books or his business. But to golf there is no end. It can be played practically the whole year round. Other games are gregarious; golf can be practised—and with great advantage—alone. There is, for example, nothing but self-discipline to prevent a student from giving up to golf the morning hours which he ought more profitably to give to his books. One would like to have from the Professors of St. Andrews a fall and candid statement in answer to such questions as : Has the proximity of their University to one of the finest golf- courses in the world been beneficial to it, or the reverse P—and : Do the best golfers as a rule make the best students ? On this side of the Tweed, at all events, no addition needs to be made to the list of athletic passions which leave our average young men no time to reflect, no time to observe, no time for any reading but that of novels.
The invasion of England by golf means also the appearance here of the camp-followers of the invader. A first visit to a Scotch golf-course that is even moderately popular, ought to any man of ordinary sensitiveness or humanity to be a most depressing experience. The moment he appears, he is accosted, or rather mobbed, by some thirty or forty miserable, weakly, ragged, often bare-footed lads, all shouting the question: "Carry your clubs, Sir " They linger about the precincts of
golf club-houses, competing for the sixpence or shilling that is the recognised payment for acting as "caddie," or carrying a player's clubs round the links. In defiance, apparently, of School Boards and universal compulsion, they spend a considerable portion of their time in thus hunting for coppers; they learn to be restless, idle, and perhaps worse If one of these lads becomes apprenticed to a trade, the chances are Mr. Gladstone's ten to one that the spirit of the Bedouin which has been implanted in him on the golf-course will revive, and that he will desert his employment for the precarious remuneration of the " caddie." On some greens, notably those of Musselburgh and St. Andrews, the chief " caddies" are men. And such men ! Many of them are dressed like scarecrows, and are, in fact, blear-eyed drunkards, who know golf well, but the whisky-bottle a vast deal better. The professional golfer—the winner of championships, the hero of a hundred matches—is one of Scotland's idols.. It is the aim of every dirty boy who haunts a green, to emulate him. But get into the coulisses of the game, and you learn that while some professional golfers are sober men, who work very hard to make a wretchedly poor income, two- thirds of them drink themselves into beggary or the grave. The simple truth is, that golf is associated in Scotland, as is no- other game, with misery, drunkenness, squalor, and the de- moralisation of the young belonging to the poorer classes.. Does the naturalisation of golf in England mean the introduc- tion of its Scotch concomitants ? If not, how is such introduc- tion to be avoided ?
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