The Complete Golfer, Harry Vardon [red novels .txt] 📗

Its difficulties—Nerves are fatal—The philosophic spirit—Experience and steadiness—The torn card—Too much hurry to give up—A story and a moral—Indifference to your opponent's brilliance—Never slacken when up—The best test of golf—If golf were always easy—Cautious play in medal rounds—Risks to be taken—The bold game in match play—Studying the course—Risks that are foolishly taken—New clubs in competitions—On giving them a trial—No training necessary—As to the pipe and glass—How to be at one's best and keenest—On playing in the morning—In case of a late draw—Watch your opponents.

It is the same game whether it is match or medal play, and the same whether you are merely engaged in friendly rivalry with an old friend, with half a crown or nothing at all but the good game itself at stake, or testing your skill and giving rein to your ambition in a club or open tournament with gold medals and much distinction for the final victors. But, same game as it is, how convinced have we all been at times that it is a very hard thing to play it always in the same way. How regularly does an evil fate seem to pursue us on those days when we are most desirous of doing ourselves full justice. Five times in a week will a golfer go round the course and beat bogey, reckoning after each performance that he has only to repeat it on Saturday to win the prize which he covets, with several strokes to spare. Then Saturday comes, and a sad falling off is there. By the time the sixth or seventh hole is reached, the all-important card has perhaps been torn up into little pieces and flung contemptuously into a convenient ditch.

Of course much of this sort of thing is due to nervousness, and there is no game in which full control of the nerves and extreme coolness are more necessary than in golf. Let the player be as keen as he likes—the keener the better—but if he is apt to become too anxious at the critical stage of a round or match, he is not the man who will ever win prizes in great competitions. He who is the most composed when in difficulties and when the game is going against him, and who treats each fresh trouble as it comes along as a part of the ordinary day's work to be surmounted in the best manner possible, is the player who will most frequently come out the conqueror. In many cases the tendency to fall into a highly nervous state at the smallest provocation will disappear with time and lengthening experience. Each year of golf should bring increasing steadiness, and the steadier a golfer becomes the more frequently will he do his best scores when they are most wanted. And so I must leave it to time and practice and the proper cultivation of the best methods to bring the ambitious beginner along into the front rank of his contemporaries. But still there are some useful hints which I may offer him and which may facilitate his progress towards the acquisition of medals and cups.

To begin with, there is a little sermon to be preached on that torn card. "Nil desperandum" should always be the motto of the competition player, and it is a motto that will probably pay better in golf than in any other game. I think it is very likely that some scores of monthly medals have been lost through a too precipitate destruction of the scoring card when everything seemed to be going the wrong way. Every player should remember that it is indeed a perfect card that is without a blemish, and that on the other hand there are few rounds played by a man who knows anything about the game that are bad all through. But some men, because they have the misfortune to be debited with a couple of 8's in the first four or five holes, forthwith give up the ghost and rend their cards into small pieces with many and varied expressions of disgust. Thereafter they play well, and at the conclusion of the match are inclined to think that they were rather in too much of a hurry to be out of the competition in its early stages. If they had made a fine card for fourteen or fifteen holes from the beginning, they might have taken two 8's towards the end much less seriously to heart. They would have said to themselves that at all events there were many very fine holes, and the misfortunes which came later were not sufficient to spoil their chances of success. Well, then, when these annoyances happen near the beginning, why not take a philosophical view of them and say that as they had to come it was best that they should come quickly and be done with, and then go on playing hole after hole coolly and properly until at the end it is found that the early misfortunes have been amply retrieved? I am aware that this is very simple advice, and that it appears like a string of platitudes, but it is extremely sound and yet it is ignored on every medal day. Never, never tear up your card, for golf is indeed a funny game, and no man knows what is going to happen when it is being played. There are numberless historic instances to support this counsel, but I will quote only one which came under my personal observation recently, and which to my mind is one of the most remarkable of all. It occurred at a London club. Six players were left in the final round for a cup competition, and the conditions of playing in this final were that a medal round should be played on two different Saturdays. On the first Saturday three of the players tore up their cards, and so only three remained to fight out the issue on the second Saturday. On this occasion one of the remaining three tore up his card very early, and soon afterwards a second did so, each being unaware of the other's action, the third player being likewise ignorant of the fact that his rivals had disappeared from the contest, and that now, being the only man left in, he could make any return he liked and become the possessor of the cup. Presently he also fell into grievous difficulties, and was on the point of tearing up his card like the others, when the player who was marking for him stayed his hand. He had some idea of what had happened, and, bad score as his man's was, he insisted on its being completed, with the result of course that he was hailed as the winner of the tournament. He at all events would for the rest of his golfing days respect the moral which I have here endeavoured to convey; and what must have been the reflections of the other competitors who threw up the sponge, when they discovered afterwards that if they had kept plodding along they would still have had an excellent chance!

Similarly in match-play competitions, do not get into the way of thinking that your chance is hopeless just because your opponent becomes two or three up on you, or even more than that, early in the game; and, above all, do not alter your style of play in consequence. Nothing pays like your own best and steadiest game and a stolid indifference to all the brilliant things that your opponent is doing. It is unlikely that he will keep on doing them all through the game, and when the reaction comes you will speedily make up the leeway. There are many ups and downs in a game of golf; and when the players are at all evenly matched, and neither has lost his head, early differences have a way of regulating themselves before the game is very far advanced. No doubt it is disconcerting to be three down after only three have been played; but are there not fifteen still to come? But it often appears that an even greater danger awaits the inexperienced golfer than that of funk when things are going against him, in that he is too frequently apt to become careless when he has obtained a trifling advantage. Never slacken your efforts when you are two or three holes up, but continue to play with all your might and with an extreme of cautiousness until at last you are one more up than there are holes still to play, for not until then are you sure of victory. When a man has once held a good lead, but by playing carelessly has allowed his opponent to get on level terms with him again, the moral effect upon him is usually extremely bad. When this has happened he is inclined to regard himself not as still on equal terms with his opponent, but as having suffered a great loss and being in grave danger of defeat. And this feeling is the prelude to actual defeat and the bitter self-accusations that must inevitably follow. I may have seemed to labour these simple points, but every old golfer will