Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 255
“A great player!” laughed the expert. “Llewellyn Smith? Why, he can hardly hit a ball! And anyway, he’s only played about twenty years!”
The Golfer’s Pocket Guide
A MANUAL TO Help Him to Recover His Game
Note: I have been very busy of late preparing a little Manual for Golfers. It was to have appeared quite early in the season, but unfortunately it was not completed in time, and still remains in an unfinished and unsatisfactory condition. In fact I am not able to publish it at all in its full form this season, and therefore present here merely a few fragments of what will next year, I hope, appear as a complete manual.
The general notion of my little book is to aid the golfer whose point of view needs straightening out to bring him back to his true bearings.
Reading over my little manual is supposed to help the golfer to recover rapidly the poise and attitude of his mind.
an intelligence test
Part One of the manual is to contain a set of questions and answers framed as an intelligence test. The golf enthusiast, before settling down to his season’s work, may test the adjustment of his brain by rapidly running over the following queries:
What is meant by summer?
The time of year during which golf is played.
What other seasons are there?
None, that I recall.
How would you define a city?
I should call it a large group of houses and people situated within eight or ten miles of a golf club.
Right. And what is a railway?
An apparatus of transportation used as a means of access to a golf club.
What is meant by the country?
Open space about a city divided into golf courses.
If you go further what do you see?
More golf courses.
Correct. What are trees?
Upright growths of wood on a golf course.
And what is grass?
Vegetation on a fairway.
Very good. You have answered these questions, which are elementary, in a way to show that your mind is rapidly readjusting itself. Let us now pass to something more difficult:
Name any way by which you can tell whether or not it is raining when you are playing golf.
A good way to know whether it is raining is to observe whether the water is running from the back of the cap down inside the back of the shirt and on down into the knees of the trousers. If so, then it is raining.
Very good. Now let us see if you recall the proper method of scoring at golf, including the technique, or, so to speak, the arithmetic of the score.
Let us suppose that in coming down the fairway you have had, as nearly as you recall, 4 long shots in which your aim has been distance, 4 more in which you have made your approach to and fro past the green and 4 more on the green itself. How many is that for the hole?
Eight.
Correct. Now let me test whether you have got back into the proper spirit of membership towards your fellow-members in your club. What is your feeling towards new members?
Keep them out.
What about Lady members?
Keep them out.
Very good. Your answers are satisfactory. Now will you tell me something as to the various combinations of players among whom golf may be played.
There is first the Two Some, or game of golf played by two people, each of whom is playing with the other because you can’t have a contest without getting another.
Then there is the Three Some, or game played by three people, each two of whom would rather that the third was not there.
Finally there is the Four Some, meaning a Large Crowd or Assemblage moving round the links, containing (as it feels to others) about seven players, and ten caddies. Total Twenty.
In connection with nearly all other games, as for example with bridge and chess, and so on, it is the custom to devise and print special “problems.”
By this means devotees of the game when not actually engaged in play may still enjoy the spirit of their pastime by working out these problems.
So far as I know, this has not been done for Golf and I am therefore proposing a few simple problems along the same lines. I will quote one or two in this connection.
problem i
A and B are engaged in a game of 9 holes and are exactly even after playing the eighth hole. A has played the last hole in 6 and, just as he completes it, is summoned to the telephone in the Club House. A calls to B to complete the hole and goes on into the Club House.
Which wins, and in how many strokes does B make the hole?
problem ii
A player, X, is playing in a secluded corner of the fairway and has already had 5 strokes and has an excellent prospect of doing the hole in either 10 or 14. Making a powerful stroke with a brassie, he misses the ball entirely. Looking all around after his stroke, he realizes that he is quite alone. The grass, the trees and the sky are exactly where they were.
There are no sounds; all is quiet, and he sees no immediate evidence of the existence of an avenging Deity. How many strokes has he had?
problem iii
Two of your fellow members, whom we will call M and N, invite you to act as umpire or arbiter in the case of the ownership of a mid-iron. They have found it mixed up among their kit, each having a mid-iron already, and each being uncertain as to whether he had an extra mid-iron, or professing to be so.
In looking at the mid-iron it reminds you of a mid-iron which you are nearly sure you left in a club locker last year — either in this club or another club — and either in this city, or in another city.
Question: — After your award is all over, how many mid-irons has A and how many has B?
There. Those may serve as samples of the kind of problems which the enthusiast may multiply to any extent. Let me turn to another point which I think is not found in any other guide to the game: —
golf for foreigners
Every member of a golf club knows that from time to time foreign visitors and guests are introduced whose language offers a certain difficulty in the conduct of play.
In my experience it is not well to try to teach them too many of the technical terms at once, or too much of the proper idiom of play. It is wiser to let them stagger along with such command of language as they already possess. I have, therefore, drawn up from my manual a little set of conversation exercises especially suited for this kind of case.
for french visitors
Exercise I
Where is the billiard? It is this. Where pose I her? She poses herself on the ground. Strike I her with the long cane? Yes, the long cane lets herself use of it. Strike I her at full force? Yes, and still yes. At what distance limits itself the flight of the billiard? At the most longest. Shall I strike? I pray you of it. You permit? Assuredly.
Exercise II
The blow was he strong? He was of a great force. And the billiard? Up to where her flight has extended itself? She has not flown. Behold her still there in the grass? Hold!
Exercise III
Where of it are we? We are of it at the fourth hole. Have we not approached ourselves again of the Club House? Yes, here see it on the left. Is not the restaurant in face of us? Assuredly. Might we not then finish ourselves of it and re-enter? But yes!
The Golf Season in Retrospect
A PERSONAL REVIEW of the Big Games of the Year
Now that the golf season is drawing to its close, the time is opportune to look back at the record of the season. And by this I don’t mean the records and achievements of such people as Mr. Jones, of Atlanta, and the other champions. All of that can be read in the newspapers.
I mean my own personal record of the games as played by myself. That after all is the point of interest — for me. And it is likely that the record is of interest also to the thousands, the millions of players, who play something of the same kind of game.
I mean the players who talk vaguely of going around in about a hundred or less, and who never saw 100 in their lives and never will. Yet these, or rather us — that is, we — are the true enthusiasts of the game.
So I will change this review a little bit and make it not personal, but collective, and ask how do we stand, where are we, after our year of golf, what have we achieved?
In the first place, financially how have we come out? Financially, there is no doubt of it we are stood back — and quite a distance. I pass over the annual subscription to the club; that’s nothing. The real cost lies elsewhere.
I keep an accurate personal budget of the thing, and looking over it find such items as lost balls, 100 balls at 85 cents and 1 ball at 15 cents (it’s hard to lose them) making a total of $85.15; ginger ale for use in the locker room, 40 flasks at $5.00 a flask is $200 — but never mind. That doesn’t matter. The game is worth it.
the big drive
The real point is, are we coming on in the game? That’s the question. And in the first place, have we yet made that Big Drive? The Great Big Drive that we dream of, when the ball sails off into the blue neither too high nor too low, and rises and rises and seems to gain speed as it goes — have we hit it yet?
We have not.
Not yet.
But we may at any time.
What greater pleasure is there on a bright clear day, with just a little wind blowing, than to step up on the tee, and make a little heap of sand and place the ball, look up at the blue sky, adjust the club, grip it, shake it, measure the distance with your eye, raise the club for a long powerful swing and then let the ball have it fair and square just below the belt and stand leaning on your driver while you watch it sail into the ether?
I’ve never done it and I didn’t do it this summer; but I meant to. And when I do it I want there to be a few people there to see, especially a few ladies.
As a matter of fact, mostly when we drive the ball either skithers off sideways or goes up in the air. But no matter — the big drive is coming. Wait for the season of 1930.
holes in one
Another point of interest in our year’s record is the question of a hole in one. In winter when we talk of golf around the fire, and illustrate our action with the poker on the hearth rug, stories are related all the time of people making holes in one. Surely some day it must come our way.
Once this year I thought I had it. On our links there is one hole where the course goes sideways up a hill and the hole is only 140 yards.
With a thorough good smash and, if I am in good shape with my limbs well oiled and all joints working, I can hit 140 yards. There is nothing to prevent me hitting into that can. When you drive you can’t see the hole or the green for the hillside, only the red flag.
On the occasion I speak of I hit the ball. It rose from sight into the air. I rushed up the hill. I looked on the fairway. The ball was not there! Eager with anxiety I ran forward to the green itself. The ball was not on the green!! There was but one conclusion to draw. The ball was in the can itself!!!
Trembling with the emotion that only a golfer of my class can understand, I drew near to the can. I could not bear to hurry. I felt, in the presence of such an occurrence, a sensation of something like awe. I pictured to myself the ball lying in the can, my coming exultation and for the future a long happy life spent in telling about it.
I stepped at last to the edge of the hole and looked in.
The ball was not there.
I got down on my knees and looked. It was still not there.
I put my hand in and felt all around the handle of the flag. The ball was not there.
The conclusion was only too plain. The ball had been removed. Some player crossing the course while I was hidden below the hill, had seen the ball in the can and removed it, supposing it there by accident.
I had just reached this evident conclusion when my opponent in the game, Captain R., who had followed more slowly up the hill, reached the green. He then stated that he had seen my ball moving rapidly in a sideways direction high in the air. I denied this. I said that he might have seen some ball moving high in the air. The air is full of golf balls moving in all directions. But that my ball was in the air I strenuously denied.
I may state that Captain R. wears glasses, has only played golf for five years and is a Frenchman; and yet his meager evidence in this matter was enough to prevent my depositing my record with the committee.
I am sure that a great many others have been similarly prevented from making holes in one. I propose that when we want to do it next year we go out at daybreak all alone; or, better still, two together and come back with the thing accomplished.
friends of the links
The loss of Captain R.’s friendship recalls to me another item which we must account for in our season’s record. Where do we stand in our gain or loss of human affection? How are we on brotherly love? I fear that it is only too evident that with each season we lose a little more. In my own case several valued friendships have come to an end over various little points of the game.
For instance, if I lose my ball in the rough and then finding it, lift it up from under a tangle of grass — in sheer exultation — and cry “Here it is!” then placing it on a mound of earth — must I lose a friend for that?
They say that Scotland is mostly a lonely country of empty spaces, and the people keep to themselves to an amazing degree, trusting no one and never speaking. I think I can understand it. They began golf there 400 years ago.
progress and surgery
But the most important question in the season’s game for me, in fact for all of us, is — Are we making progress? Do we play better than we did?
We don’t.
That’s the plain fact, so let us out with it — we don’t. In my own case I feel that I cannot get much further in golf without a surgical operation, or rather a series of surgical operations.
I need my thigh bones taken out and shortened. That’s the only way I can get what the “pro” calls the “stance” that I ought to adopt. Similarly, I need my back lengthened, by letting in a piece anywhere near where my braces join my trousers. If I had six inches more of back let in there, I could get that easy swinging action that I can envy but never emulate.
And I need a couple of sets of wheels put in somewhere for the mashie shot. I can’t do it without.
But after all, all the other players of my class are the same: They need wheels and cogs and they need lengthening and shortening. I don’t know one that I call a perfectly adjusted machine except at the Nineteenth Hole.
So why worry?
Instead of that, let us sit about all winter and talk golf, oil up our clubs, tell lies, and drink our conscience to sleep. And presently it will be the summer of 1930 and the grass will be green again, and perhaps — who knows? — we may really begin to play.
VI
FUTURITY IN FICTION
Long After Bedtime
A NIGHT MYSTERY Story in the Mysterious Style
The house indicated as “No. 4 John Street” was one of four houses, each standing detached from the other, on the upper side of John Street. It is important for what follows to understand clearly the location of the houses. No. 1 stood first, while No. 2 was just above it, No. 3 coming next in order, and No. 4 being the fourth or last of the group.
The houses were separated by an interval of about forty feet between each two of them, so that there was forty feet between No. 1 and No. 2, forty feet between No. 2 and No. 3, and a similar distance, forty feet, separating No. 3 and No. 4. It would thus have been possible if the windows were open to hear anything louder than ordinary conversation from house to house. There is, however, no reason to believe that on the night in question any of the windows were open.
All of the four houses had been built apparently under one and the same contract and offered a great similarity in outline. But owing to the rise in the ground, No. 2 had one more step in front of it than No. 1, and No. 3 had one more step in front of it than No. 2, while No. 4, where the ground continued to rise, was higher by one step than No. 3 (the house immediately below it).
The house indicated as No. 4 was occupied by the family of Mr. John Smith, who had lived in it since first it was built. Smith himself was employed as a stock-broker’s confidential clerk, and the family were in comfortable, if not affluent circumstances. There was no reason to believe that Smith was in any way embarrassed financially. Nor was there anything in his past life to suggest any criminal antecedents or any tendency to be hurried or driven into any rash or desperate conduct. He was a more or less regular churchgoer, was well liked in the neighborhood, and was reputed as rather above the average as a bridge player. It had been remarked, however, that as a bridge player he was more inclined to lead from length than from strength. It should be added that Smith had no ear for music.
On the night in question, the night of the fifth of March (just preceding the sixth of March), the entire Smith household seem to have been in bed and asleep well before midnight. For what follows it is important to understand the arrangement of the bedrooms in the Smith residence. The house was a two-story structure with a kitchen extension, all the bedrooms being on the upper floor. That of Mr. and Mrs. Smith was in the front looking out over the street and occupying the entire front face of the house. There were two side bedrooms and a bedroom over the kitchen.
The side bedroom on the right, or north side, the high side or top side, that is the side looking sideways up the side street, was occupied by the two little girls of the family, Flora and Dora, aged respectively eleven and thirteen. The two girls were both at the same school, though Flora was ahead of Dora in geography.
