The Golf Courses of the British Isles. Bernard Darwin
up to the club-house and tempts him to lunch before his time, requires two of the very longest and straightest of hits.
Taking them day in and day out I think the greens at Woking are the best that I know to be found inland—Mid-Surrey excepted. They are often very nearly perfect, and are practically always good. They are not as a rule alarmingly fast, nor so slow as to convert putting into mere hard physical exercise, but of a nice, easy, comfortable pace, that reflects enormous credit on Martin, who is one of the best of green-keepers. I can only end as I began by asserting that there is no more delightful course whereon to play golf.
CHAPTER II.
LONDON COURSES (2).
Now leaving the heather, we must turn to some of the other substances upon which Londoners play their weekly golf. On the course of the Mid-Surrey Golf Club in the Old Deer Park at Richmond there are probably more rounds of golf played throughout the whole year than on any other golf course in the three kingdoms. You may go down to Richmond on any day of the year, on which it is not snowing, and be sure of finding a good many people who have managed to get a day off and are spending it in playing golf. The business of the world presumably goes on in spite of their absence, and indeed the week-day crowd on a golf course points the moral that we are none of us indispensable.
The Mid-Surrey course is in a park, and must therefore be classed among the park courses, but it is hardly typical of its kind. The trees stand for the most part as occasional and isolated sentinels guarding the edges of the rough. We do not drive down whole avenues of them, nor, as on some courses, do they play the part of gigantic goal-posts through which we must direct the ball. The country is more open and more sparsely timbered than the typical park, but, if the big trees only interfere with us now and then, there are several peculiarly odious little spinneys which are almost certain to thrust themselves upon our notice.
The Old Deer Park is a pretty spot, but the course does not at first sight look attractive; its disadvantages may be summed up in two adjectives—‘flat’ and ‘artificial,’ nor do the course’s enemies forget to make the fullest use of them. Flat it is—as flat as a pancake, as may be seen at a glance, and the bunkers, which are now innumerable as the sands of the sea, have been raised one and all by the hand of man. So much is certain, and on such a course there is a limit to our powers of enjoying ourselves; we cannot hope for the exhilaration that is born of sea and sandhills and, in a minor degree, of fir-trees and heath. On the other hand, of the joy that comes from a well-struck brassey shot—a joy that has been sadly diminished on most courses by the rubber-cored ball—we can taste in abundance. The last nine holes in the Old Deer Park repay really long straight play with the wooden clubs almost as well as any nine holes that can be mentioned, wherefore the Mid-Surrey course, if it be not quite ‘the real thing’ itself, provides at least an admirable training ground.
MID-SURREY
The tenth hole
There is but one thing lacking for the player’s perfect education in brassey shots, and that is an occasional bad lie or bad stance; he will constantly be taking his wooden club through the green, but the ball will always be sitting up on a perfect lie and obviously requesting to be hit, while his stance will be of the smoothest and flattest. When he leaves this smooth and shaven Paradise and fights the sea breezes amid hummocks and hollows, he will find that considerably more is asked of him, and may possibly re-echo the dictum of the celebrated Scottish professional, that it is necessary to be a goat in order to stand to his ball, and a goat, moreover, qualified with no uncertain epithet.
In this matter of perfect lies and stances Mid-Surrey is apt to pamper and over-indulge its devotees; and the same may be said of the greens, for they are as near perfection as anything short of a billiard-table could possibly be. Much care and money and a transcendent genius among green-keepers, Peter Lees, have combined to make them a miracle of trueness and smoothness. Some greens that are extraordinarily good, true and easy, yet afford no particular pleasure, since they are too slow and soft; a perfectly true Turkey carpet might lead to the holing of many putts and yet the player would soon long for some barer, harder, more untrue substance. The necessity of hitting our putts very hard covers many little deficiencies in our execution, but it is poor fun compared with the art of stroking the ball up to the hole.
The Mid-Surrey greens are open to none of these reproaches, since they combine perfect trueness with plenty of pace, and we must strike the ball a delicate, subtle blow; the methods of the bludgeon are equally unsuitable and disastrous. There are plenty of little ripples and ridges and hollows in the greens, though few bold slopes, and there is therefore scope for considerable nicety of putting; above all, there is the cheering knowledge that a putt has but to make a good start in life to ensure its turning neither to the right nor to the left and ending a blameless career at the bottom of the hole.
Thus we have perfect lies, stances, and greens, and it is clear that we shall have none but the most futile excuses for our errors. If we hit the ball we ought to do a good score, and, especially on the way out, nothing but our own folly should prevent a long and gratifying sequence of fours; that is to say, we ought to do six fours, two threes at the short holes, and a five, which we may fairly allow ourselves at the second. This green can be reached in two shots; Robson did reach it in two in the News of the World tournament, but to have seen him do it was enough to prevent our own vaulting ambition from o’erleaping itself once and for all. They were indeed two stupendous shots, and if we carry the big cross-bunker safely in two and then play a nice straight run-up on to the green, we shall have done all that can be reasonably expected of us. Of the other holes on the way out the third is perhaps the most engaging, since we must employ our heads as well as our clubs. There is a spinney—a detestably, almost mesmerically attractive spinney—to the left, and if we pull our drive we shall be confronted with a shot wherein the ball must rise abruptly to a considerable height and at the same time traverse a considerable distance. If, however, we have pushed the tee-shot well out to the right, we shall have our reward in a simple approach shot, a steady four and a consciousness of virtue.
As far as the turn, then, we may progress in an average of fours, but we shall be lucky if we do not considerably exceed it on the way home; we shall need a series of lusty second shots and even so shall be none the worse for a wind behind us at all the holes, which is alas! impossible. There is no one hole that stands out particularly from its fellows, but the one we are likely to remember best is the twelfth, not so much for its intrinsic merits, which are considerable, as for a fine cedar tree, which fills us with joy till it has entirely and hopelessly stymied us from the hole.
The bunkers are many and cunningly devised, and there is also rough grass, but the lies in the rough are not very bad, and if we are going to make a mistake we shall be well advised to do it thoroughly; thereby we shall be so crooked as to avoid the bunkers, while brute force and a driving iron may extricate us from the rough with but little loss. This, of course, is not as it should be, but the difficulty is an insuperable one on many inland courses.
Not far off are two nice courses, Sudbrook Park and Ashford Manor, but from Mid-Surrey we will voyage to another park course, the newest of its kind, at Stoke Poges. Stoke Park is a beautiful spot, and there is very good golf to be played there; the club is an interesting one, moreover, as being one of the first and the most ambitious attempts in England at what is called in America a ‘Country Club.’ There are plenty of things to do at Stoke besides playing golf. We may get very hot at lawn tennis or keep comparatively cool at bowls or croquet, or, coolest of all, we may sit on the terrace or in the garden and give ourselves wholly and solely to loafing. The club-house is a gorgeous palace, a dazzling vision of white stone, of steps and terraces and cupolas, with a lake in front and imposing trees in every direction, while over it all broods the great Chief-Justice Coke, looking down benignantly from the top of his pillar and gracefully concealing his astonishment at the changes in the park.
Never was there a better instance