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

Necessity for thought and ingenuity—The long-handicap man's course—The scratch player's—How good courses are made—The necessary land—A long nine-hole course better than a short eighteen—The preliminary survey—A patient study of possibilities—Stakes at the holes—Removal of natural disadvantages—"Penny wise and pound foolish"—The selection of teeing grounds—A few trial drives—The arrangement of long and short holes—The best two-shot and three-shot holes—Bunkers and where to place them—The class of player to cater for—The shots to be punished—Bunkers down the sides—The best putting greens—Two tees to each hole—Seaside courses.

Many as are the golf courses with which the coast, the country, and the suburbs of the towns and cities of Great Britain are studded, they will no doubt be still more numerous as time goes on, and it is earnestly to be desired that in the laying out of links in the future, more thought and ingenuity may be exercised than has been the case in far too many instances during the past few years, when clubs have been formed and links have been made in a hurry. Certainly some are excellent, and I cast not the least disparagement upon them. I enjoy them. Frequently the hand of the master architect of golf is visible where one observes how shrewdly and exactly the hazards have been placed, and the peculiarities of the conformation of the country turned to the utmost account when useful, or cunningly dodged when it has been considered that they could be no good to the golfer. Without a doubt, generally speaking, those courses are the best which have been designed by good players, because none know better than they what makes the best golf. A man whose handicap is some distance removed from scratch, but who has played golf for many years, and thinks with good reason that he knows a fine course when he sees one, would nevertheless, in designing a new one, be led unconsciously to make holes which would be more or less suited to his own style of play. He might, indeed, in a most heroic spirit, place a bunker at a point which he knew would be more than usually dangerous for him, and he would feel a better and a braver man for this act; but a hundred of its kind would not prevent the course from being the ideal of the long-handicap man and not the ideal of the fine player. If plans were prepared for a new links over a particular piece of territory by a 12-handicap man and a scratch player, it is highly probable that in the most material matters they would differ greatly, and it is fairly certain that a committee of the oldest and most experienced golfers would unanimously pick out the scratch player's plans from all the others as being the best and soundest, and that without knowing who had prepared them. Time and the aggregate of pleasure given to golfers of all degrees would justify the selection.

Therefore, when a new club is established and a new course is to be laid out, I suggest that it is the wiser and the better plan to take time over it and to secure the best advice. A good links is not made in a day or a week. Perhaps the cleverest and most ingenious constructor could not in a whole year make one which was in all respects the best that the land could give. Almost every time that the course was played over during the first hundred rounds, a new thought for its improvement in some small detail would occur. The moving of a tee twenty yards to the right, the addition of a couple of yards to the end of one of the bunkers, the placing of a shallow pot bunker some eight or ten yards across at some particular point—all these and many other matters of equal significance will constantly suggest themselves. My experience tells me that the perfection of a good course is slowly attained. Like wine, it takes time for the richness of its qualities to mature. Therefore, when the committee of a new club in the country sits in conference with a plan of its newly-acquired land laid on the table, and decides unanimously that a tee shall be placed at a point marked A, a bunker along the line B, another bunker at C, and the hole at D, and so forth, I protest that they are doing poor justice either to themselves or to the game. But on many links made during the past few years—made in a hurry—the results of such mechanical methods are only too apparent. I hope that the few hints that I offer in this chapter may be of service to old clubs with improvable courses and new ones with none as yet, and to those fortunate individuals who contemplate laying out a course in their private grounds for the use of themselves and their friends. Private courses are increasing in number; and for my part, though I must obviously be guilty of prejudice, I can conceive of no more enjoyable acquisition to a country house than a nine-hole course, and assuredly the possessor of it will be envied and his invitations to week-ends much coveted.

The question of the amount of land that shall be called into service for the fulfilment of a scheme for a new links is one that is usually outside the control of those who project it. They have to cut according to their cloth. I need only say here, therefore, that in a general way some thirty or forty acres of land are necessary to make such a nine-hole course as shall possess a satisfactory amount of variety, and not less than seventy acres for a full-sized eighteen-hole course, this as a matter of fact being the acreage of the South Herts Club's course at Totteridge, with which I am at present associated. By great economy of space and the exercise of unlimited ingenuity, courses might be made from a trifle less land, but they are better when they are made from more. Two or three hundred acres are sometimes utilised for a good links. Where land is very scarce, and there is no possibility of obtaining more of it, I earnestly advise private owners and committees to content themselves with a nine-hole course which will have plenty of length and good sporting quality about it, rather than sacrifice the good golf that is thus within their reach in a desire to possess a regulation eighteen-hole links that could only give complete satisfaction to ladies and children. Too many courses, with scarcely a brassy shot upon them, have been ruined by this greed for holes.

When the land has been allotted to the purpose, a very thorough and careful survey should be made of all its features. This is not to be done in one morning. The land, no doubt, is very rough, and at the first glance it looks ill-adapted to the golfer's purpose. Many times I have had