Out-door Games: Cricket and Golf/Chapter 10
OLD ALICK,
Hole Maker.
CHAPTER X
Nerve and Temperament
I have remarked before that to the golfer as he gets older there are compensating advantages to set off against the diminished power and length of the long strokes of the tee, and through the green. One of these compensations is in the shape of better putting and approaching. The young player is strong and feels capable of anything as far as distance and power are concerned: he might remove mountains with his driver and brassey, but in his heart he would not object to let his caddie approach and hole out for him. I have played many games in my time, but I confidently say that for a test of nerve, golf is far the most trying game in the world, and next to it billiards. I know perfectly well that a man may feel unutterably nervous before he goes in to bat at cricket, but his nervousness goes when he has scored twenty runs, and been in half-an-hour. If you get out, well you have no further opportunity of getting nervous till your second innings comes round, and under no circumstances ought a bowler to be nervous, as one bad ball may always be redeemed by a wicket next ball. But putting has to be gone through every hole, and no golfer exists who does not know that putting is more than half a matter of nerve and nerve only. "I've faced battle and tigers," an elderly major is reported to have said, "with equanimity, but this putt of a yard and half fills me with dread unspeakable."
I have mentioned golf and billiards together as the two games that give the hardest test of nerve, and the reason is this, that in both games strength is the all-important matter: strokes that require calculation of strength want nerve, but frequently are played without it. In cricket you either hit a ball as hard as you like or you merely stop; that at any rate is the case when you first go in, and when you are nervous. In football you run your hardest and kick your hardest, and few spectators are much the wiser; and a nervous man can always hit hard at golf off the tee and through the green, for as he has not got to think of strength, he is less likely to fidget and foozle the ball. But when you are fifty yards from the hole, and a bunker yawning between you and it, or when you have to lay an approach putt of twenty yards more or less dead to win or halve a hole, then the question of nerve becomes everything, because strength is everything. The lofted fifty yards shot is perhaps the most difficult shot in golf, and what does the nervous golfer do in most cases? He either cuts it too fine and is very short in the attempt to lay it dead, or else, frightened of the bunker that lies so dangerously near to him, he determines to get over at all risks and overruns the green by forty or fifty yards. If you watch an amateur billiard-player in a handicap before a crowd, you will soon see whether he is nervous by the way he judges the strength. The most common failing of such players is that they hit too hard; an easy stroke is one which will be succeeded by another easy stroke if the proper strength is applied, but the striker is afraid of missing the stroke and hits too hardy and the balls are scattered and the break lost.
In putting, a man is generally so impressed by the fact that a reserve of strength is needful, that a contrary effect is produced, and he is nearly always short—nervousness in putting in nine cases out of ten makes a man hit too softly. He is on a smooth green which looks so fast that it terrifies him, while if it should slope slightly down hill he is more terrified still. For some reason which it is impossible to explain, golfers always seem to be far more frightened at being two yards beyond the hole than they are at being two yards short. To be two yards beyond is far better than to be two yards short, for in the first place you give the ball a chance of holing, and in the second place it relieves the eye somewhat to turn round and putt along a different line.
I watched a final match once in the amateur championship, in which two most distinguished amateurs were struggling for the mastery, and both drove and played through the green as well as could be desired, and both putted in a way that a charity-school boy would have been ashamed of. In one sense it was refreshing for an ordinary mortal to see great men fail in the way they did, for we could all flatter ourselves we could quote this instance as a proof of how hard putting was, when we failed ourselves. But in this case the putting of both these distinguished players was never "up"; they failed where nearly every player who is "off" his putting fails; they were short.
To prove how much nerve is the first, second, and third necessity in putting, you may take a man of thirty years old who has been and perhaps still is a good cricketer, and has a good eye for games generally. Set such a man on a putting-green with a putter and three or four balls, and he will very likely putt as well as the best professional; ask him to drive or play a brassey and he will be nowhere. Experience is nothing in putting; it is everything for the rest in the game. In the one case experience begets fear, in the other confidence. The man of thirty in a few years will very likely develop into a really bad putter, not because he has not the skill—for he proved his skill when a beginner—but because he has learnt the terrors of putting, and his skill is overpowered by his nerves.
Nerves appear to be absent one day and painfully present another: so there are red-letter days when even a nervous man can putt, but the more nervous a man is the worse will he putt, and in no other part of the game will he find nerves play such demoniacal tricks.
Golf is the most nervous game yet invented, because most of the success of the game is a question of strength; it is an interesting question to ask. Why is it more of a trial to nerves than billiards, which is wholly a question of strength with a reasonable amount of accuracy? In a long hole of over four hundred yards, the golfer need not bother his head about strength for the first two strokes; he has to hit both these as hard as he can—there is no nice calculation of less or more. In billiards every stroke requires thought of the question of strength; even a safety miss may easily be altogether defeated in its object if played too hard or too soft. If strength or the consideration of strength be the chief cause of nervousness, billiards ought therefore to be more of a test of nerve than golf. I contend, however, that it is not, because of the varying conditions of the greens and turf. In billiards you play for a whole evening or for a whole match on the same table; that is a very small object as compared with a putting-green, and if you have any pretensions to play at all, you ought to gauge the pace of a billiard-table after an hour's play. At golf, however, it may be truly said that no one putting-green is exactly like any other—one is fast, another slow, one smooth, another uneven, one with one sort of turf, another with another. Some holes are in a sort of pot, which, though small just where the hole is, nevertheless has widely expanding sides, and you probably will find your ball dead if you get it into it at all from any distance; but another is on a table-land, where the chief difficulty is not to get the ball on the table-land but to keep it there. You may find one green covered with blown sand, while another has not even much grass on it; while one green may be up-hill on the approach side, and another down-hill. Of course it is easy to see if a green is on a level and if on a slope, but it is by no means easy always to judge by the eye whether a green is faster or slower than its immediate predecessor. One spiky blade of grass may make all the difference in laying a ball dead or holing it, and the eye cannot always be depended on to see such things. To get the strength of every green fixed in your mind is difficult for any man, for a nervous man well-nigh impossible.
There is another reason why golf is a greater test of nerve than billiards, and that is the variety of weapons that you must have for different strokes. You play with the same cue at billiards, with the same bat at cricket, with the same mallet at croquet, with the same racquet at tennis, lawn-tennis, and racquets; golf is the only game in the world, as far as I know, where it is absolutely necessary to have a minimum number of five or six clubs to play a game with. Now it is only the best players who are masters equally of five or six clubs, and I doubt if this can be said truly even of them. To the huge majority of players there are one or more clubs in which they cannot affect to feel much confidence. I do not pretend to say that an average player is always "off" with this or that club, but as every golfer knows there come times or spells of times when all skill with one class of club seems to vanish. A great player—I may say a very great player—once told me that he had been unable to drive off the tee to his satisfaction for no less a period than four years—this player must have been more than human if to a greater or less degree he was not during all that time in an important match troubled with nerves when he took his stand on the tee. Driving off the tee for the majority of players is, I should say, on the whole the stroke where less foozling or bad play takes place than in any other stroke, and yet here is the case of a great player failing at it for four years, when he was very near the prime of life. Mr. Hilton, who has twice won the Championship, has said somewhere that he uses wooden clubs, brasseys, and spooned wooden clubs of sorts all through the green simply because he is absolutely unable to use iron clubs and play a champion's game with them. But Mr. Hilton has to take out an iron club, because there are some occasions when it is absolutely impossible to use any other club. If a man is off his drive he nevertheless has to play with his driver or brassey off the tee, for to drive with a cleek is ignominious and fatiguing withal. The player with only an ordinary capacity perhaps may feel really confident with only one club, and yet has to play with several; so of him it may be said that every stroke—except that played with one club—is a trial to his nerves. A fearless man is fearless because he has confidence, and to feel confidence is impossible when playing with a club that bitter experience has told you you cannot use.
Certain players, therefore, hate and cannot play with certain clubs; perhaps it may be said of a few, very few, that they play equally well or badly with all clubs. But even if this is true of clubs, there is yet another aspect of the question, and that is, the question of distance. I very much doubt whether any player in England could truthfully say that all distances were alike to him, that he played equally well or equally badly at a shot that wanted a 180-yards knock or a thirty. Take a stroke of eighty yards and one of forty, the mashie or some sort of lofted iron would be used for both these shots; and yet a player knows that at one distance he has a good chance of making a good stroke, at the other distance his heart goes into his boots. But yet the ordeal has to be faced, the stroke must be attempted when it comes, as it assuredly will in due course. In billiards it is equally true to say that only a few men play equally well at different shots, the long losing hazard or the long winner, the screw, follow on, &c.; but at billiards it is far easier to regulate and engineer your game so as to avoid having to attempt a stroke you cannot play. If you dislike long losing hazards, you must and can try and play the cannon and potting game at the top of the table; if you hate those strokes, because you cannot do them, play an open game and go in for losing hazards from baulk. You can do this far more easily at billiards than you can at golf. It is possible to do it to a small extent only at golf. I have seen a player who was bad at lofting a ball over a bunker forty yards from the hole, play the previous stroke short in order, instead of having to play a forty-yards shot, to make one that took eighty yards to get over the bunker. In the same way you may go round a hazard instead of trying to get over it. But it is true of golf that you will find it impossible to avoid being compelled some time or other to play with a club you have little confidence in, and to negotiate distances you hate. I have heard it said that Goethe used to go to the top of a tower every day in order to accustom himself to look down without growing giddy. A golfer by practice may improve his play with a club, but he very likely will find that, during the time he has occupied himself with this club, another has mysteriously failed him; and in any case the terrible ordeal of putting has to be gone through, and it is the painful experience of bad putters that practice does by no means perfect, but only causes new terrors to appear.
Still, I think, on the whole, increasing age does carry some compensation for golfers; and I believe that when a man has played some years, and his handicap, may be, is brought from scratch to three, it is often found that his short game, especially his putting, is rather improved than otherwise. He has lost some of his length, he cannot force a ball out of its bunker as he did formerly, and his eye is not quick at judging the distance of about eighty yards which he has to carry to get over some danger. But he is somewhat pachydermatous and case-hardened when he gets on the green, and it is astonishing what a difference a deadly long putt can make in the fortunes of a match. The middle-aged player perhaps realises the fact that golf is a game, while to the youngster it is business: the veteran plays philosophically, and if he does this he may very likely find himself putting respectably. It is a trifling blot on a great game that putting, relatively to the rest of the game, is far too important. A man who foozles his drive and slices his approach, but who is nevertheless always down in two strokes after he has got on the putting-green, if not in one, is very hard to beat except his opponent is a really good player.
It has been said, that every match is won by the short game; this, like many much-quoted sayings, is a half-truth. You cannot win a match if you approach and putt badly; but there are some courses, Sandwich, for instance, where you may just as well go home as dream of winning a match or making a respectable score if you are "off" your driving. At Sandwich, therefore, you can with truth remark that the match cannot be won by the bad driver.
Closely connected with the question of nerve is that of temperament. It is not proposed to make this a treatise on the game: if it were I should begin with the truism that it is wise for a golfer to keep his temper. One great value of games is that they are the finest discipline for the temper. There can be no doubt that golf is terribly trying to a man. The hideous feeling of discomfort that comes over a player when he has topped his ball and made a deep hole in it, the terrible persistency with which ball after ball is sliced, the missing of one or two really short putts, the bad luck that attends him when putting really well, the way the hole is missed by a tenth of an inch, the frequent bad lies—all these combine to make life a burden. But though golf may be more trying to the temper than any other game, every game has its trials. Tennis, for instance, when you first fail to win a short chase, or your opponent keeps on serving nicks; billiards, when your ball is always under a cushion, or the balls dead safe time after time; cricket, when an umpire has given you out by a mistake of judgment—all these are trials, and they form part of the discipline of life. But on the whole I think that golf is perhaps the greatest trial of all. The bad-tempered golfer is a nuisance and anxiety to himself and his friends; indeed I have seen it come to such a pass that, though a man may have friends anywhere else, they are not to be found on the links. Some men abuse their poor innocent beast of burden, the caddie, in a manner painful to hear. It is far better and more humane to abuse your opponent who has a right of reply, than your caddie who has none. The tempers of some golfers have their humorous side, but there are also some that are painful to witness. We must congratulate ourselves that the glorious element of humour is never quite absent from golf, serious though the game and the Scotch nation be. But the ridiculous exhibition of temper and sulkiness that a great many players show habitually, only begins to be humorous when the game is over and the opponent of the irascible one is telling a congenial friend after dinner about it, and the offender is not present.
We must not judge our friends harshly. There are some tempers which Satan must have had a hand in forming, and if others are fortunately not afflicted in the same way, they must remember that golf is a very irritating game. Most players improve in temper, or, rather, a philosophical calm comes over them, as they grow older; but there are some, forming quite a respectable minority, of whom the exact contrary is the truth, and the melancholy fact has to be recorded that they get worse and worse. It is trying perhaps to find oneself beaten by youths, who a few years before used to touch their caps to you, and you presented with a third; but it is odd that everybody does not realise that this development is inevitable, and should therefore have come naturally and not as a violent surprise. We all admire the gentlemanlike courtesy with which some accept their fate, and play with some opponent of about the same age, or in congenial foursomes; but how painful, and yet how humorous is the sight of a man who under similar circumstances becomes irritable, fussy, fidgety, a pitiful sight to men and angels. Such cases, however, are painfully common, and like Jorrocks, we can only implore ingenuous youth to try and avoid these pitfalls, and realise while still young and in the heyday of his success, that the inevitable hour must come sooner or later, and make it a duty to meet it with philosophic calm.
We all know the golfer with fads. I have played at many games, but golf is played by more faddists than have been returned to the House of Commons during the past ten years. To write of these fads, just to state in bold English what they are, is enough to show their absurdity. One man insists on having his caddie and everybody he may be playing with, fixed behind his back and nowhere else—on the absurd ground, I suppose, that if they take up their position in any other spot they catch his eye. The batsman at cricket protests in vain if he asks short-slip and point to move to short-leg because when he plays the ball they catch his eye. There are other players who have a fit if, when they have the honour, they find their opponent's ball teed up before their caddie has put their own on the tee. Why they cannot move their opponent's ball if it is in the way, or if it prevents them from placing their ball in the spot they require, or leave it alone if it does not, it is impossible to say. A funeral is not an exciting or particularly pleasant occupation, but there are many funerals where a dead silence is not more cultivated than at some golf matches; and it is stupid and useless to fly into a passion because somebody thirty or forty yards off who is not playing golf at all, or at any rate has nothing to do with you, talks or laughs so that you must hear him. Unless the green is a private one the talker has as much right to be there and to laugh or talk as you have to play golf, and every player should try and keep this fact in mind. It is advisable that nobody should stand behind a man's club when he hits the ball, but even this, I feel convinced, a man can get accustomed to, if he will only apply his mind to it. If you don't want to talk yourself you can be as dumb as a drum with a hole in it, as Sam Weller says, and you may go farther, and forbid anybody to speak to you; but to stamp and swear because somebody within hearing distance of you chooses to talk to a friend is ridiculous and silly, partly because it is contemptible, and partly because, as you are not in a position to stop all conversation on the links, you must grin and bear it.
To ingenuous youth I observe that all these fads are absurd, and nobody who possesses any self-discipline need fall a victim to them. Don't let a youth suppose that, because a golfer of great skill is a victim to one or more of these fads, it is necessary that he should be so also. Every youth should be told by some candid friend that to be a faddist is silly, and if the desire be resisted when he is young it will never prevail. Drinking is apparently pleasant to many, judging by the Excise returns, but ingenuous youth is told by a wise father that he must not give way to it, and he does not. In like manner, if a young golfer makes up his mind that he will not allow himself to be disturbed if a rook flies across the line of play, or his opponent talks to his caddie, he will find that such things will not disturb him and he will enjoy the game more himself and be a far pleasanter companion and opponent to everybody else. You can let anything grow upon you if you permit it to do so, and why should we expect a man to have disciplined himself in his youth to avoid gluttony or any other pleasing vice, and not have feelings of scorn for the golfer who has allowed every absurd fad to take such possession of him that he is a slave to them, and an annoyance to himself and a nuisance to his fellow-creatures. But I suppose such things will always be. One bit of advice may finish this chapter—let faddists play each other and leave the non-faddists to enjoy their game in their own way.
