The Mystery of Golf

THREE things there are as unfathomable as they are fascinating to the masculine mind: metaphysics ; golf; and the feminine heart. The Germans, I believe, pretend to have solved some of the riddles of the first, and the French to have unravelled some of the intricacies of the last; will some one tell us wherein lies the extraordinary fascination of Golf ?

I have just come home from my Club. We played till we could not see the flag; the caddies were sent a-head to find the balls by the thud of their fall; and a low large moon threw whispering shadows on the dew-wet grass — or ere we trode the home-green. At dinner the talk was of Golf; and for three mortal hours after dinner the talk was — of Golf. Yet the talkers were neither idiots, fools, nor monomaniacs. On the contrary, many of them were grave men of the world. At all events the most monomaniacal of the lot was a prosperous man of affairs, worth I do not know how many thousands, which thousands he had made by the same mental faculties by which this evening he was trying to probe or to elucidate the profundities and complexities of this socalled “game.” — Will some one tell us wherein lies its fascination ?

There is rampant in the world at the present moment a sort of sporting mania, an international sporting mania; excellent in its way, but very difficult to analyse or account for. Manias of one kind or another are not unknown to history. Such, for example, was the mania for Crusades in the Middle Ages. It had a highly rational basis, namely the defence of Christendom against Islam and the wresting of the Holy Land from its desecrating possessors. But to such lengths did this mania go that in 1212 an army of children once actually set out, with banners and paraphernalia, to conquer some vague, invisible foe; with the result that hundreds died before they had gone any distance, and hundreds were sold into slavery. Such, too, was the Hippodrome mania in the fourth century at Byzantium, when feeling ran so high that society was divided into hostile sections, and money, and even blood, was recklessly spent in contests between the faction of the Green and the faction of the Blue. And such was the tulip mania of Holland in 1637, when, so keen was the rivalry for bulbs, that a whole nation was absorbed in the strife and many a family ruined itself by speculation in rare or mythical roots.

Well, today the western world seems to be labouring under something of the same sort. Year by year athletics occupy a larger share of the attention, not only of the students, but of the teachers, at our schools and colleges, and year by year the sums spent in intercollegiate and international contests increase. To win a comparatively valueless cup by means of a comparatively unserviceable craft, a single individual spends some millions of sesterces, and two nations look on intent on the race and applaud. Teams without number, of all kinds, cross and re-cross the Atlantic and Pacific; money is poured out like water on race-horses, motor-cars, dirigible balloons, and what-not. — Like the Crusades, there is for all this a highly rational basis, that most laudable one of amicable rivalry in brain or muscle; but, like the Crusades, it is a question whether it is not here and there just a little overdone.

This does not explain the fascination of Golf. No; but it may help to explain its existence. Golf is some hundreds of years old; but only in the last two or three decades has it obtained its extraordinary footing. The interesting question is, Why is it that, amongst the thousand-and-one games today played by men, women, and children in Europe and America, why is it that Golf commands so large a share of attention, of serious and thoughtful attention ? The literature of Golf is now immense, and, much of it, good. Eminent men have devoted to it serious study; mathematicians try to solve its problems; prime ministers play it; multimillionaires resort to it; and grown men the world over jeopardize for it name and fame and fortune. Not even Bridge quite so absorbs its votaries. Cricketers, foot-ballers, tennis-players do not so utterly abandon homes and offices for the crease, the field, or the lawn. Only the Golfer risks everything so he may excel in putting little balls into little holes. — What is the clue to the mystery ?

The clue is a complex one. To begin with, it is threefold: physiological; psychological; social. — In the first place, no other game has so simple an object or one requiring, apparently, so simple an exertion of muscular effort. To knock a ball into a hole — that seems the acme of ease. It is a purely physiological matter of moving your muscles so, thus the tyro argues; and in order to move his muscles so, he expends more time and money and thought and temper than he cares, at the year’s end, to compute. Without doubt the ball must be impelled by muscular movement: how to co-ordinate that muscular movement — that is the physiological factor in the fascination of Golf.

In the second place, when the novice begins to give some serious consideration to the game, he discovers that there is such a thing as st}rle in Golf, and that a good style results in good Golf. He begins to think there must be some recondite knack in the game, a knack that has to be learned by the head and taught by the head to the muscles. Accordingly he takes lessons, learns rules, reads books, laboriously thinks out every stroke, and by degrees comes to the conclusion that mind or brain has as much to do with the game as have hand and eye. — It is here that the psychological factor comes in.

In the third place, having progressed a bit, having learned with a certain degree of skill to manipulate his several clubs; having learned also, and being able with more or less precision to put into practice, certain carefully conned rules as to how he shall stand and how he shall saving, the beginner — for he is still a beginner — discovers that he has not yet learned everything. He discovers that the character of his opponent and the quality of his opponent’s play exercise a most extraordinary influence over him. Does he go out with a greater duffer than himself, unconsciously he finds himself growing over-confident or careless. Does he go out with a redoubtable player, one whose name on the Club Handicap stands at Scratch, he cannot allay a certain exaltation or trepidation highly noxious to his game. And it is in vain that he attempts to reason these away. Not only so, but even after months of practice, when the exaltation or trepidation is under control, often it will happen that an opponent’s idiosyncrasies will so thoroughly upset him that he will vow never to play with that idiosyncratic again. This we may call the social or moral element. It affects the feelings or the emotions; it affects the mind through these feelings or emotions; and, through the mind, it affects the muscles.

Now, I take it that there is no other game in which these three fundamental factors — the physiological, the psychological, and the social or moral — are so extraordinarily combined or so constantly called into play. Some sports, such as football, polo, rowing, call chiefly for muscular activity, judgement, and nerve; others, such as chess, draughts, backgammon, call upon the intellect only. In no other game that I know of is, first, the whole anatomical frame brought into such strenuous yet delicate action at every stroke; or, second, does the mind play so important a part in governing the actions of the muscles; or, third, do the character and temperament of your opponent so powerfully affect you as they do in Golf. To play well, these three factors in the game must be most accurately adjusted, and their accurate adjustment is as difficult as it is fascinating.

However, after all this abstruse metaphysical disquisition, shall we essay to discover practically what it is at bottom makes a man play well and what it is makes a man play ill; and what it is makes a man one day play well, and the next day ill ? — Ah! he who could answer such queries would tear the veil fromMaia. Some men there be, of course, who will never play Golf: either they have a poor “eye;” or their muscular sense is but imperfectly developed; or their keenness in sport is nil; or they are too much taken up with the things of this world; or they are men wrapt up in the contemplation of so-called higher things. University professors I have known who, when they ought to have had their eye upon the ball, had their eye upon the clouds, and their minds farther off still. Other men I have known to whom a round of Golf was so casual and frivolous a pass-time that they would seek to relieve the taedium of the game (and perhaps entertain you!) by the narration between strokes of interminable and pointless anecdotes. Never by such men will the Antient and Royal Game be properly played. By such men Golf may be given up at once and for ever. For, despite all appearances to the contrary, Golf is one of the most serious of sports. As well try to study metaphysics indifferently, or to attack the feminine heart indiscreetly, as try to play Golf spiritlessly. One cannot serve Golf and Mammon. Golf is the most jealous of mistresses. Are you worried and distrait; are you in debt and expecting a dun; are stocks unsteady and your margin small; is a note falling due; or has a more than ordinarily delicate feminine entanglement gone somewhat awry? Go not near the links. Take a country walk, or go for a ride; drop into the Club and ask numerous friends to assuage their thirst; — do anything rather than attempt the simple task of putting a little ball into a little hole. For to put that little ball into that little hole — or rather into those eighteen little holes — requires . . . Requires what? Alas! so many things, so many untliought-of things. It requires, in the first place, a mind absolutely unperturbed, imperturbable. You may play chess or bridge or polo or poker on the eve of bankruptcy; I defy you to play Golf on the eve of a curtain lecture. It takes a strong character to play strong Golf. Golf is as accurate an ethical criterion of a man as is the Decalogue. Perhaps this is why your rigid and puritanical Scots Presbyterian plays so admirably. An eminent Scots philosopher once told me that the eminence of Scottish philosophy (note the Scottish appraisal of things Scottish, an you wall) was due to the fact that Scots philosophers were brought up on the Shorter Catechism. I venture to think he might have extended his axiom to the St. Andrew’s game. — But, not to beat about the bush, this much is certain: Golf is a game in which attitude of mind counts for incomparably more than mightiness of muscle. Given an equality of strength and skill, the victory in Golf will be to him who is captain of his soul. Give me a clear eye, a healthy liver, a strong will, a collected mind, and a conscience void of offence both toward God and toward men, and I wilt back the pigmy against the giant. Golf is a test, not so much of the muscle, or even of the brain and nerves of a man, as it is a test of his inmost veriest self; of his sou! and spirit; of his whole character and disposition; of his temperament; of his habit of mind; of the entire content of his mental and moral nature as handed down to him by unnumbered multitudes of ancestors. Does his pedigree date back to Romantic heroes — Frankish horsemen or Provencal Knights ? Let him see to it that he curbs his impulsive Southern ardour. Does he trace his descent to the Vikings of the North, strenuous sea-kings that roamed afar and devasted foreign shores ? Let him see to it that he applies himself to tasks more close at hand, that he wins nearer victories. Is he a stolid Goth, bull-necked and big of loin ? Let him see to it that the more agile-witted Kelt does not wrest victory from him by a deftness more delicate.

But all this, again, is vague, theoretic, abstruse. What you, my confidential reader, seek, I know, is some simple, intelligible, practicable rule by which to determine how you, when you ring up an opponent and propose a match, shall be able to play transcendently well. What is it, precisely, that will enable you to go round under eighty today? — Confidential reader, did ever you hear tell of the elixir of life ? Did ever you hear tell of the universal solvent? of the philosopher’s stone ? of the Sphinx her riddle ? or of Fortunatus his cap ? Mayhap you have. But mayhap you do not know that the secret of success in Golf is more recondite, far more recondite, than is any one of these. These be bagatelles compared with that. A greater fortune awaits him who will discover and divulge the mystery of Golf than that awaits him who will square the circle, explain the potentialities of radium, or solve the problem of the perpetuity of motion. — For, mark you, it is not against the fellow-man his human opponent that the Golfer really wars. Nor is it even against Bogey that he pits his skill. The contest is with himself. There is no reason known amongst men why any Golfer should ever get into a bunker. He knows, or he thinks he knows, exactly how every stroke in the round should be played. He may carry as many clubs as he likes, clubs of the most flagitious and flamboyant make. Grave and reverent signiors will stand stock-still and dumb the while he drives; and no thing on this terraqueous globe be permitted to impede his play. A sanguine flag gratuitously points out for him the hole; overtly printed on the sand-box or the score-card is the distance; his blameless ball (over the -making of which countless rival manufacturers have expended an ingenuity extreme) lies meekly at his feet — could Nature, or Art, or the invention of Man farther go to expedite his way ? It is Nature, it is Bogey, that are handicapped, not he; — and perchance it is the cognizance of the enormity of the responsibility thus laid upon him that appals the timorous Golfer. The conditions are simple in the extreme: to knock a ball into a hole; and damp sand, and mown fields, and rolled greens, and caddie, and professional, and flag — to say nothing of cobbler’s-wax, and resin, and chalk, and hob-nails, and a red coat — contribute to aid him in coping with his foe. — Against whom do you contend if not against yourself ?

Ah! But the conditions are the same for your opponent also. There’s the rub. He too, therefore, wages a warfare against self. Accordingly Golf resolves itself into this: — It is not a wrestle with Bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological, psychological, and moral fight with yourself; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and irreducible constituent of the game is to determine which of the players is the more worthy combatant. You try to prove to your opponent that you are a better man than he; and your opponent tries to prove to you that he is a better man than you; and the ordeal is decided by competition with a mutual and ideal foe, a foe merciless and implacable; a foe impeccable and impartial, and that wall by no means clear the guilty. Golf is the refined modern equivalent of the ancient barbarous Ordeal. To support our claims to superiority today, we do not walk blind-fold and bare-foot over nine red-hot plough-shares, we invite our opponent to beat us in putting a ball into eighteen holes; and we look to Pan — in the shape of bunkers and hazards — to Defend the Right; — and Pan is as inexorable as the plough-shares.

Golf seems to bring the man, the very inmost man, into contact with the man, the very inmost man. In football and hockey you come into intimate — and often forcible enough — contact with the outer man; chess is a clash of intellects; but in Golf character is laid bare to character. This is why so many friendships — and some enmities — are formed on the links. Despite the ceremony with which the game is played: the elaborate etiquette, the punctilious adhesion to the honour, the enforced silence during the address, the rigid observance of rules, few if any games so strip a man of the conventional and the artificial. In a single round you can sum up a man, can say whether he be truthful, courageous, honest, upright, generous, sincere, slow to anger — or the reverse. — Of these arcana of Golf the uninitiated onlooker knows nothing. Yet if ever that onlooker is initiated into these Eleusinian mysteries, he changes his mind and sees in the links a school for the disciplinary exercise of a cynical or stoical self-command rivalling that of the Cynosarges or the Porch.

Not only is Golf an excellent test of character, it is also an excellent medicament for character. Did we only know it, there is a whole Materia Medica between sand-box and flag. The volatile can find, if he will, a sedative; the phlegmatic, an alterative; the neurasthenic, a tonic. And it is a test of character in more ways than one: the cheat simply could not play Golf: in the last resort, no one would play with him. It is also a test of tact. Many a man has to learn how to lend a deaf ear politely to a loquacious friend, or to curb his own tongue when playing with a taciturn one; and probably there is no one but has had on some occasion or other to keep his own temper sweet while the atmosphere about him was mephitic with a surly silence or rent by vituperative abuse.

The two best schools for mind and manners, says the sage, are the Court and the Camp. He might have added a third. He who would attain self-knowledge should frequent the links. If one seriously essays the task, one will “find oneself” in Golf. Few things better reveal a man to himself than zealous and persistent efforts to decrease his handicap. That profound and ancient maxim γνώθι σϵɑʋτον, a maxim so ancient and profound that Juvenal averred it had descended from heaven (Sat. xi, 27), might be inscribed on the portal of every Golf Club. Even it might be said that Tennyson’s trinity of excellences, self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control, are nowhere so worthily sought, or so efficacious when found, as on the links. — To the Greeks this will be foolishness; to Golfers a platitudinous truism.

For Golf must be played “conscientiously”—so an eminent King’s Counsel once remarked to me. He was right. The duffer imagines that at the very most it only requires a good “hand and eye” and some sort of knack. A good eye and a very large amount of skill it certainly does need; but he who thinks that these are the Alpha and Omega of Golf will be apt to remain a duffer long. Between this Alpha and this Omega is a whole alphabet. Golf requires the most concentrated mental attention. It requires also just as concentrated a moral attention. The moral factors in the game are as important as the physical. He who succumbs to temptation will have to succumb to defeat. Satis imperat, says an old adage, qui sibi est imperiosus : he rules enough who rules himself. This should be the motto of every Golfer. “If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men,” says the Dhammapada with oriental extravagance, “and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors — ” a text which is brought home to one in every round. “Greater,” said Solomon, “is he that ruleth himself than he that taketh a city.” In Golf the ruler of himself will take many a hole. — And in truth the Golfer knows this, and many and curious sometimes are the means lie adopts to attain this end. Every reader will recall the idiosyncrasies of his friends, even if he cannot recall his own : how one will regale himself on stout and steak, and another lunch off chicken and tea; how Robinson will order a tankard of ale, and Anderson a pony of Scotch; how Bibulus will challenge Asceticus to take another helping of pie, and Asceticus respond by challenging Bibulus to wash it down with liqueur; how Medicus will seek by diet or drugs to eliminate this or that unheard-of acid from his frame, and Hereticus live high to accomplish the same purpose, — The cellar and the pantry of a Golf Club, an they would, could divulge many a tale. And all, what for ? To “bring under,” as St. Paul saith, this peccant body of ours, or to brace this puny soul of ours to the conflict so that we shall not “beat the air,” as saith St. Paul again.

The thousand and one things that we should not do in Golf are evidence of the difficulties of the game. In no other game must immense strength go hand in hand with extreme delicacy. If a fraction of a square inch of wood or steel does not come in contact with a fraction of a cubic inch of gutta-percha exactly so and not otherwise, you are landed in a bunker, or you fly off to one side, or you over-run the hole. And in every stroke in Golf this nicety of accuracy is necessary. If in the Drive the whole weight and strength of the body, from the nape of the neck to the soles of the feet, are not transferred from body to ball through the minute and momentary contact of club with ball absolutely surely, yet swiftly — you top, or you pull, or you schlaf, or you slice, or you swear (let us hope episcopally: which, being interpreted, according to the anecdote, signifieth silently). So with the Put. Not even an expert dare be careless of his stance or his stroke even for the shortest of Puts. And as to that Mashie shot, where you loft high over an abominable bunker and fall dead with a back spin and a cut to the right on a keen and declivitous green — is there any stroke in any game quite so delightfully difficult as that ?

The difficulties of Golf are immense. For think for a moment, there is scarcely a muscle in the body that is not called into play; and every muscle is controlled by a nerve. In fact every muscle is a bundle of fibres or spindles, and every fibre or spindle is controlled by a branch of a nerve, cannot contract save in response to a stimulus conveyed to it by a branch of a nerve. Unless an order is sent from the brain and distributed to each and every part of the machinery which moves the trunk and limbs, not a movement can be made. And to ensure harmonious and coordinate movement, those orders must be very carefully, not only timed, but apportioned. Indeed, it would seem that duplicate orders, that two sets of stimuli, have to be despatched. There is, first, that which governs the “ muscular sense,” or, as some physiologists prefer to call it, the Kinosthesis, the sense that determines how tightly to hold the club and that poises the body for the swing. It is the sense, speaking generally, which ensures the proper relative rigidity or flexibility of opposing flexor and extensor muscles. It is chiefly concerned in judging distance, and is especially noticeable in the short Approach. In the second place, there is the hit or swing. This is the office of the motor centres, and is brought about by a strong contraction of muscles, a contraction that should be rapidly yet perfectly evenly increased. Both sets of stimuli must be intimately and intricately combined throughout the whole course of the swing: the wrists must ease off at the top and tauten at the end; the left knee must be loose at the beginning and firm at the finish; and the change from one to the other must be as deftly and gently, yet swiftly wrought as a crescendo passage from pianissimo to fortissimo on a fiddle.

Is it possible, from this physiological point of view, to determine what is the fundamental difference between a good player and a bad ? Can we say what it is makes a great Golfer ? At first sight one is inclined to answer, As well try to find out what makes a great general, a great poet, or a great artist. Genius plays as large a part on the links as it does in fife; and “genius” the dictionary says “implies the possession of high and peculiar natural gifts which enable their possessor to reach his ends by a sort of intuitive power.” However, leaving the genius out of view as beyond the reach of ordinary explanation, what is it that enables one man always to go round under eighty and another never ? Well, for one thing, I suspect Imitation plays a large part in Golf — as indeed it does in all life. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace and Professor Poulton have pointed out its importance in biology, and Professor Yrjo Hirn its importance in art. Mimicry it is probably — whatever in its ultimate analysis mimicry may be — which is at the bottom of all education; and education is a preparation for life. But to mimic requires the innervation of nerve-centres in the brain. To begin at the bottom then, if the physiologists are not all wrong, to excel in Golf requires first of all a good brain. There is a part of the brain called the Corpora Striata. “The Corpora Striata,” say the neurologists, “are great motor ganglia in some way concerned with the execution of Voluntary, Emotional, and Ideo-motor Movements” (Bastian). “It translates volitions into actions, or puts in execution the commands of the Intellect; that is, it selects, so to speak, the motor nerve nuclei in the Medulla and Cord appropriate for the performance of the desired action, and sends down the impulses which set them in motion” (Broadbent). In co-operation with the Corpora Striata is the Cerebellum, which “co-ordinates movements ... or combines the general movements . . . ordered by volition” (Ib.). — That is to say, if you want to move your arms and legs altogether so, you must call upon the Striate Bodies and the Little Brain to convey the orders; and if the so is a highly complicated and delicate series of movements, they must be good Striate Bodies and a good Little Brain to be equal to it; and to these undoubtedly we must add a good spinal cord to boot.

Secondly, given a first-class Corpus Striatum and a Cerebellum equally good, these two parts of the brain, together with the Cord and all the nerve-cells and fibres by which they operate, must be educated, by constant practice, to perform smoothly, quickly, and forcibly the complex motions necessary for the peculiar stroke of Golf. This, I take it, is done by what Professor Loeb calls the “associative memory.” The associative memory is a very important affair indeed. Loeb goes so far as to make it synonymous with the Will, with Self-consciousness, with the Ego! Yet its office and function are simple, namely to ensure the almost automatic sequence of such movements as have previously been deliberately and hesitatingly combined. The Golf stroke is a highly complex one, and one necessitating the innervation of innumerable cerebro-spinal centres. Not only hand and eye, but arm, wrist, shoulders, back, loins, and legs must be stimulated to action. No wonder that the Associative Memory has to be most carefully cultivated in Golf. To be able, without thinking about it, to take your stance, do your waggle, swing back, pause, come forward, hit hard, and follow through well over the left shoulder, always self-confidently — ah! this requires a first-class brain, a first-class spinal cord, and first-class muscles. What the anatomists say is this, that, if tli proper orders are issued from the Cortex, and gathered up and distributed by the Corpora Striata and the Cerebellum, are then transferred through the Crus Cerebri, the Pons Varolii, and the Anterior Pyramid of the Medulla Oblongata, down the Lateral Columns of the Spinal Cord into the Anterior Cornua of Grey Matter in the Cervical, the Dorsal, or the Lumbar region, they will then “traverse the Motor Nerves at the rate of about a hundred and eleven feet a second and speedily excite definite groups of Muscles in definite ways with the effect of producing the desired Movements” (Bastian). I am afraid, however, that unless these anatomists can also tell us some remedy for improperly issued and incorrectly communicated orders, I am afraid their lucubrations will be of no very great practical value to the Golfer who is off his game. It would be a comfort to find out what portion of the anatomical apparatus really was at fault. It would be a comfort to be able to fix the blame, say, on the Hippocampus Major or the Valve of Vieussens. Which the offending centre, when we play badly, is, I am afraid we shall not know till some foozling Golfer submits to trepanning. — Perhaps not even then; for if, as I believe is the case, no alienist has yet been able to discover a lesion in the lunatic, it is not likely that the surgeon will find one in the foozler. And yet it is always some unknown but peccant centre that the erring Golfer blames. The bad workman used to complain of his tools; but, with numberless tools to choose from, and with absolute power of choice, the bad Golfer is perforce driven to complain of some part of himself — never himself apparently— the Old Adam dies hard! It is always one’s digestion, or one’s liver, or one’s supra-renal capsules that are at fault. — Which is a curious ethico-psychological fact. — At all events it is a tremendous compliment to the fascination of Golf that it is to these technical adumbrations of the anatomist thatnve are driven in order to explain or to excuse the vagaries of our game. One does not get “off” one’s football in this way, or one’s chess or one’s poker or one’s bridge; and if one did, one would hardly go to histological pathology for the cause.

And yet, what, after all, do these innumerable excuses that the poor Golfer invents for himself after a bad round mean ? Whom or what is he blaming ? Is he not made up of cerebral and cerebellar centres; of cranial and spinal nerves; of extensor and flexor muscles ? Are they not he ? Which is the blamer and which is the blamed P Is there some inscrutable and immaterial psychic centre, inerrant and supreme, that sits somewhere enthroned, and sways and rules these lesser centres ? Shall we find in Golf proof of the existence of a Soul ?

— Of a soul! If the physical mysteries of Golf are so recondite, what of the psychic? These, I fear, be beyond us. How analyse the complexities of the human golfing soul P How tread the labyrinthine mazes of temperament and of character ? How unravel the mesh-work of feelings and emotions, hopes and desires and fears, exultations and disappointments, heated angers, heavy despondencies, the wrath so hard to allay or ere the sun goes down; the vain imaginings, the ridiculous puffings-up of our little souls, of our silly little souls, over a hole halved in three or a circumvented stymie ? Or how explain the disturbances these bring about in the higher layers, and the resulting delinquencies of the motor muscles ? — In Golf we see in its profoundest aspect that sempiternal problem of the relation of mind to matter. Nowhere in the sumtotal of the activities of life is this puzzle presented to us in acuter shape than on the links. Is there an ideal and immaterial Self in the Golfer which knows precisely what he wants to do; and a bodily and fleshly one that will not or cannot carry out its behests ? Is there an immaterial mind, superior to, but linked with, a material brain; or does the brain, in its subtlest interstices, shade off into an immaterial mind ? — We misuse words. We construct an artificial and needless barrier between mind and matter. By “matter” we simply mean something perceptible by our six senses; and by “mind” we simply mean something imperceptible by these senses. What “matter” really is we know as little as we do what “mind” really is. Suppose we had sixty senses. Suppose we could actually perceive electricity, magnetism, aetherial vibrations, molecular motion, radial emanations, the interplay of emotion, the working of memory, the miracle of thought; suppose we could detect every and all of the myriad manifestations of energy as exhibited in the sum-total of this wonderful world! Would not the barrier be very hastily thrown down, and Matter reveal itself as in reality one and the same with Mind ? — Speculations such as these carry us far. I seem to see in the conscientious Golfer, doing his utmost, poor soul, to make matter (or mind) transcend its own powers, a type and symbol of Mankind; of Mankind warring with its environment, striving to overcome its limitations, reaching up to some unknown ideal, pressing towards some inscrutable goal. — What potentialities may not lurk in Man! If Amoeba has developed into Man, into what may not Man develope! Some day we shall get some arch-angelical record rounds. — I wonder what Par Golf on the New Jerusalem links will be! — But these be transcendental themes.

One more speculative point, and we will drop metaphysics. — The Golfer, strive as he may, is the slave of himself. Perhaps nothing is borne in upon the Golfer more strongly after months of practice than that his place on the Club Handicap is determined by this his slavery to himself. There is not a Golfer living but would say “An I could, I would.” The links prove the fatal and irrefragable chain of Cause and Effect. Every Golfer wills to excel, and every Golfer sedulously searches for the causes of failure. — ’T is only one more proof of the transcendental identity of Mind and Matter. If, as the biologists aver, omnis cellida e cellidci, surely also omnis idea ex idea, and Thought and Volition are links in an interminable chain.

The reticulations of the Golfer’s brain must be multitudinous. Golf seems to afford a corroboration of the theory that there are in man several layers of consciousness. Indeed, the late Mr. F. W. H. Myers might have found in Golf a pertinent proof of the existence of his “subliminal self,” to the functions of which he attributed so important a share. Why a man should, say in June, play a superlatively excellent game, and in July play an execrable one, in spite of the fact that he is in July just as fit as he was in June, that passes the wit of that man — poor wight! He broods over it; he almost weeps over it; he tries remedy after remedy, but in vain — beef and beer, total abstinence; a more elaborate waggle, no waggle; right foot forward, left foot firmer; a cigar before a game, no tobacco at all — all to no purpose. He knows to a nicety how every stroke should be played; but he is blessed, so he says, if he can play it. — Can it be that the so-called human “individual” is after all a duple, triple, quadruple, quintuple, or multiple personality? Almost it would seem so. You take your stance at the first tee, and Personality No. I. severely makes up his mind to play carefully and well. At the approach, Personality No. II. presses. At the put, Personality No. III. is over-anxious, and is short. At the second tee, Personality No. IV. flings care to the four winds of heaven. No. V. takes his eye off the ball. No. VI. goes into a bunker. No. n swears (let us hope sub-liminally). By this time the exasperated Golfer compares himself to the Gadarene demoniac.

And now, wherein lies the supreme mystery of this so-called “game”? In this surely, that whereas the thing to be done seems most easy of accomplishment, it is as a matter of physical and metaphysical fact a feat requiring the deftest use of the most delicate mechanism. Mind (or Matter, which you will) in the long course of its evolution from Amoeba to Man has as yet, so far as we know, here upon this planet produced nothing more complex in structure than the human neural apparatus; and it is this apparatus, in its most secret recesses, that is called into requisition by every player at every stroke. And whereas the thing to be done is rigidly fixed, but the anatomical machinery by which it is to be done is capable, humanly speaking, of infinite improvement; the pitch of excellence at which we aim continually recedes the farther we advance, and we are lured on, and lured on ... to the delight of professionals and caddies, to the pecuniary profit of Club Stewards and manufacturers of expensive balls, but to the sorrow of waiting wives and the scorn of maledictory onlookers.

From all this is there anything practical to be learned ? I am afraid not. If you have golfed from childhood, you will laugh at it; if you have taken up Golf at forty, it will not be of much use to you. The youthful caddy, who picks up the game by sheer imitation and whose cortical centres are in a docile stage; and the elderly professional, who has done nothing but make clubs and swing them all his life, probably play almost automatically — as you or I wield a knife and fork or a pen. To the one, Golf is what gambols are to the kitten; to the other, what mousing is to the cat. Not theirs to analyse the method of their play. I know a professional who says that in reality there is only one stroke in the game in which he has to keep in mind one little rule, namely to play off the right foot in a hanging lie. How different from the amateur novice! I was playing the other day with a University professor, a charming man and an erudite. He happened to be off his drive, and at the fourteenth tee (a sequestered spot), with a sort of despairing cry to heaven, he muttered as he took his stance, “Now, I wonder whether I can for once keep my eye on the ball and follow through ? ” He did not even attempt to burthen his University brain with more than two, and these elementary, injunctions.

The nearest thing, it seems to me, to playing Golf is playing the piano. Really, it seems to require as much dexterity, and, of course, hugely more strength. Well, we all know that Aristotle long ago said that playing on the piano was learned by playing on the piano — it was the аin his day.

John Stuart Mill once anxiously debated whether there would not come a time when all the tunes possible with the five tones and two semi-tones of the octave would be exhausted. So, many a non-golfing wife and non-thinking onlooker thinks there surely must come a time when the erring husband and friend will tire of trudging over the country trying to put sixty-cent balls into four-and-ahalf inch holes. The outsider does not know that at every hole is enacted every time a small but intensely interesting three-act drama.¹ There is Act I., the Drive, with its appropriate mise-en-scene: the gallery, the attendant caddies, the toss for the honour. At long holes it is a long act if we include the brassey shots. There is Act II., the Approach. This is what the French call the noeud of the plot: much depends on the Approach. And the mise - en - scene is correspondingly enhanced in interest: the lie, the hazard, the wind, the character of the ground — all become of increasing importance. There is Act III., the Put. It also has its back-ground, its “business,” and its “properties:” the caddie at the flag, the irregularities of the green, the peculiarities of the turf, the possibilities of a stymie, the relative roll and resilience of the gutty versus the rubber-cored ball.— Eighteen dramas, some tragical, some farcical, in every round; and in every round Protagonist and Deuteragonist constantly interchanging parts. No wonder the ardent Golfer does not tire of his links, any more than the ardent musician tires of his notes. What theatre-goer enjoys such plays ? And what staged plays have such a human interest in them? And, best of all, they are acted in the open air, amid delightful scenery, with the assurance of healthy exercise and pleasant companionship. What theatre-goer enjoys such plays ? — And when the curtain is rung down and the eighteenth flag replaced, instead of a cigar in the tail-end of a tram-car, or a whiskey-and-soda at a crowded bar, or a snack at a noisy restaurant, there is the amicable persiflage in the dressing room or the long quiet talk on the veranda.

Nor does the Golfer ever tire of the stage upon which these his out-door dramas are played. — I have been promising myself time and again to go round some day, unarmed with clubs and carrying no balls, for the express purpose of seeing and enjoying in detail the beauties of my links. There are some woods fringing portions of the course most tempting to explore, woods in which I get glimpses of lovable things, and a wealth of colour which for its very loveliness I forgive for hiding my sliced ball. There are deep ravines — alack! I know them well — where, between lush grass edges trickles a tiny rill, by the quiet banks of which, but for the time-limit, I should loiter long. There is a great breezy hill, bespattered with humble plants, to traverse the broad back of which almost tempts to slice and to puli. A thick boscage too whereon the four seasons play a quartet on the theme of green, and every sun-lit day composes a symphony beautiful to behold. And there are nooks and corners and knolls and sloping lawns on which the dappled shadows dance. Smells too, curious smells, from noon-day pines, and evening mists, from turf, and fallen leaves. — What is it these things say ? Whither do they beckon ? What do they reveal ? I seem to be listening to some cosmic obligato the while I play; a great and unheard melody swelling from the great heart of Nature. — Every Golfer knows something of this. But, as Thucydides says, these be holy things, whereof I speak not. Favete Unguis.

Lastly, let us not omit to include amongst the elements of the fascination which Golf wields over its votaries that gaudium certaminis ,² that joy of contest, which always the game evokes. It is one of the chief ingredients of the game, and it is evoked and re-evoked at every point of the game, from the initial drive to the ultimate put. It is an ingredient of every manly sport is this “warrior’s stern joy,” but in Golf it is paramount and overt. Every stroke arouses it, for the exact value of every stroke is patent to both player and opponent. Few other games keep the inborn masculine delight in sheer struggle at so high a pitch. No wonder the stakes in Golf are merely nominal; no wonder that often there are no stakes at all: the keenness of the rivalry is stimulus enough. — And this, surely, is one of the chief beauties of the game. It will never be spoiled by the intrusion of professionalism; at least it will never be played by highly-paid professionals for the delectation of a howling and betting mob; nor, thank heavens, will rooters ever sit on fences and screech at its results. —

But the ultimate analysis of the mystery of Golf is hopeless — as hopeless as the ultimate analysis of that of metaphysics or of that of the feminine heart. Fortunately the hopelessness as little troubles the Golfer as it does the philosopher or the lover. The summum bonum of the philosopher, I suppose, is to evolve a nice little system of metaphysics of his own. The summum bonum of the lover is of course to get him a nice little feminine heart of his own. Well, the summum bonum of the Golfer is to have a nice little private links of his own — and, now-adays, perhaps, a private manufactory of rubber-cored balls into the bargain, and to be able to go round his private links daily, accompanied by a professional and a caddie. — It would be an interesting experiment to add to these a physician, a psychologist, a chirurgeon, a psychiater, an apothecary, and a parson. But he would probably be beaten by his caddie.