II.

For straightaway work (and that is all that need concern the inexperienced player) the mashie can do nothing that the midiron cannot do, except to put the ball higher in the air and more at the mercy of the wind. Yet, when the average golfer gets within a hundred and fifty yards of a green out comes his mashie, and one of two things happens: if the ball is half topped it goes to perdition; if it is hit clean it drops short of the green. A lower flying ball would have reached the green or passed it. But “many are called and few get up.”

Of ten players, nine overswing with all the irons, and especially with the mashie. Now, a mashie, like a cheap piano, cannot be forced by the average player without disastrous results. A very skilful player can force a club in an emergency, but if he were to force it at all times he would soon cease to be a very skilful player. I know of no holes that call for a long shot with a mashie. If you find yourself one hundred and fifty or more yards from a green, and the ball has to be dropped dead, that is both your misfortune and your fault; your previous shots were short.

If, in the back-swing, your mashie passes the perpendicular, and your wrists are carried higher than your equator, you are forcing the stroke. Even if you are in the predicament referred to, and have to have a long ball, it is better to do the forcing with your wrists and forearms than to wrap the club around your neck. As to where you should look while executing the shot, I find that the pleasantest results are obtained by letting the eyes follow the ball. You don’t lift your head or shoulders to do this; you merely roll your head, and your eyes follow the entire flight of the ball. Nothing is gained, and something is risked, by staring at the ground after the bird has flown.

THE MIDIRON.

Before continuing these illuminating remarks on golf, it might be well to echo the warning of Andrew Lang in an introduction to an edition of Walton’s Angler. “If there are any facts in this book,” he said in effect, “they got in by accident.” This being understood, we may proceed to consider that indispensable tool, the midiron.

The most satisfying shot in golf would be the drive, if you drove well every day; but all the circumstances of this stroke are not always within your control; on the off days driving is something that, since it must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. But the short shot with the iron, up to, say, seventy-five yards, is, next to putting (which is as simple as beanbag), the easiest thing to do imaginable. You need to keep but two things in mind: first, you must lay the right elbow against the side and take the club back with the wrists and forearms; second, you must finish the stroke with the knuckles of the right hand underneath. This in itself insures the clubhead being carried through on the line. When this has become automatic you may add the crowning touch—finishing with the clubhead very low, the blade laid flat, and your arms perfectly straight and pointed at the flag.

Don’t look at the ground after the ball is gone. Let everything follow it,—club, arms, eyes and body. A very good plan is to practise the shot with eyes on the flag. When you discover that you can hit a ball without looking at it you will have no trouble in looking at it when the occasion requires.

And this, in a word, is what I have been driving at, that you cannot play golf easily, gracefully and accurately until you have lost all fear of the ball and have got rid of the notion that keeping your eye on it is the fundamental principle of the game. Almost any professional will tell you that it is not looking at the ball that enables you to drive two hundred yards; it is keeping your shoulders in one plane throughout the stroke.

A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO

_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.

Hope springs eternal in the human jar; Man never is, but always to be par.

* * * * *

“Let firmness combined with ease be your motto,” advises George O’Neil. Or, as Horace suggested to Maecenas, on the links of Ancient Rome, “Otium cum dignitate.”

* * * * *

Woman’s place, as Socrates said, is in the home. One of her appeared on a public golf course yesterday in so transparent a skirt that four members of a foursome topped their approach shots, and one of them left his ball on the green.

* * * * *

Golf would be a perfect game if it were not for the golf gabble; and this must be accepted as inevitable. If a person who is conscious of the absurdity of golf gabble is unable to quit it, how hopeless is the case of the unconscious gabbler.

Here’s an example of it: We bring off a good iron shot, and instead of ascribing it (silently) to chance or happy circumstance, we must announce to our companion that at last we have solved the secret of the iron shot. And so we gabble our way around the course, till the sound of our own voice is wearisome to our own ears.

It’s a Scotch game. We borrowed it from the Scotch, but we added the gabble.

* * * * *

Olds Grant Rice and Bill Hammond of the N. Y. Mail and Sun respectively came out and golfed with ye Scribe. Grant is a regular player, but Bill is kind of irregular.

* * * * *

The Saturday Review says that the fascination of golf is understandable, but “the wicked hate of the non-player is less easy to grasp.” Nobody objects to the game itself; it is the incessant gabble about it that bores one to tears. Tie a non-player to a bench in the locker room of any golf club and he would go mad within the hour.

Golf is a gabby game because it is so stuffed with ifs—“if I hadn’t hooked,” “if I hadn’t looked up,” “if the ball hadn’t hit the bunker,” etc. And it is all a great waste of breath, nobody is interested in your “ifs,” not even the man you are playing with.

* * * * *

Hon. Brand Whitlock, staff correspondent for the _Line_ at Brussels, advises us that there is a good golf course there, and that the Flemish caddies touch their caps politely and do not seek to draw players into intimate and animated conversation.

* * * * *

In Wilmette, we gather, the goats are those who play golf on Sunday, and the sheep are those who go to church. This classification is flattering to neither flock.

* * * * *

Curious golfers who may follow the learned arguments on “what constitutes a good hole” must conclude that the purpose of the architects is not to make the game easy for democracy. Par figures mean nothing to the average player; they are for the few gifted beings who participate in national tournaments. As courses are now laid out, there is a “short way to the green,” calling at the outset for a carry of, say, 190 yards. The next thing will be to station a policeman at the bunker, to chase off the course a player so unlucky as not to carry the hazard.

* * * * *

“Golf is the pastime of small men with large incomes, who are too old to play tennis and too dull to talk to women.”—WALTER PRITCHARD EATON.

It is also the pastime of large men with small incomes, who vary golf with tennis, and who are too busy to hang around a samovar discoursing the drayma.

To be entirely fair to Mr. Eaton (although one is under no compulsion to be fair to a dramatic critic), he put the sniffy remarks about golf into the mouth of one of his short-story characters. Tennis players should not scorn Golf. We have discovered that playing golf improves our tennis game at least fifty percent. Golf compels deliberation in striking; and waiting for a tennis ball, instead of leaping at it, is the secrecy of accuracy; not to mention the turn of wrist when the racquet (or golf ball) is taken back. This is what keeps the tennis ball out of the net and the golf ball out of the rough.

* * * * *

Of course you know that Lady Brassie is a champion golf player in England.

* * * * *

A golfer in Rockland, Me., has a cat which chases the ball and sits by it until the player arrives. This is interesting chiefly as being the solitary reason for a cat’s existence.

* * * * *

“Each caddy should be at his ball by the time the player arrives.”—Indian Hill note.

But what happens is: “Hurry up, kid! I’ve found the ball.”

ON THE STYXVILLE GOLF LINKS.

“Bozzy,” chuckled Dr. Samuel Johnson, “you were but a novice at the game.”

The amiable lexicographer teed off on the links of the Styxville Golf Club and he and Boswell, his caddie, leisurely followed the ball.

“Yes, Bozzy,” continued Dr. Johnson, “I used to think you the most enterprising press agent that ever tooted a horn, but when I compare your work with the twentieth century article I am convinced that you were the merest alphabetarian.”

“I put down everything that happened,” said Boswell, humbly.

“Pooh, pooh! A press agent who publishes only what has happened would starve to death these days. But I have you even on that count. How about the time I lost my pantaloons and was too late at the Cheshire Cheese. Not a word about it in your celebrated ‘Life of Johnson.’ By the way, what became of the ball? Did you keep your eye on it?”

Boswell located the gutta percha and remarked that he considered the loss of his patron’s unmentionables too trivial an item for a dignified biography.

“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, relapsing into his ancient stilted manner, “you are an unconscionable blockhead. When, not long ago Booth Tarkington lost his trousers a great ado was made by the press agent and the papers were full of it. ’Twas not half so good a tale as mine. You might have scribbled a whole chapter about it. Dick Steele made an excellent jest on the matter and Noll Goldsmith a set of verses, Davy Garrick gagged his lines with it and put the house in an uproar. Give me the cleek.”

Leaning on the club he gazed at his abashed biographer with a twinkling eye.

“Nay, Bozzy, you were a very good press agent for our day, but you would not stand much show if you were on earth to-day. Tarkington wouldn’t keep you a week. You couldn’t caddie five minutes for Irving Bacheller or Ham Garland, or Hop Smith, or any other modern man of letters. Boz, you’re a back number.”

* * * * *

Golfers, especially those addicted to slicing, will approve a plan to pasture sheep in the rough and on the crest of bunkers. A well cropped rough will take much of the gloom out of their zigzag operations.

GOLF AND GRUEL.

Why are golf matches referred to as “gruelling contests?”

—IGNORAMUS.

Golf and gruel are both Scotch, and as inseparably associated as kilts and bagpipes.

THE LAY OF THE LAST GOLFER.

Come, Winter, come, and free me from the thrall Of Golf! Bestrew the lureful links with snow: For they that are condemned to chase the ball Are hopeless as the Person with the Hoe.

Midsummer form is gone, nor all my play Can win it back to cancel half a stroke; The driver’s off, the brassie’s had its day, The mashie’s blown, my putting is a joke.

And yet I chase the ball around the lot (He needs must whom the golfing devil drives), Hoping I may—but knowing well I’ll not— Pull off a brilliant string of fours and fives.

Sound, Winter, then, “the trumpets of the sky,” Lock up the links and throw away the key; Else, like a self-doomed Sisyphus, must I Pursue this foolish game from tee to tee.

WHY INDEED?

Short colloquy on a street car:

“Why the hell don’t you go to war instead of carrying golf clubs?”

“Why the hell don’t you go to war yourself?”

* * * * *

A Philadelphia golfer gets on the First Page for playing 144 holes of golf in one day. But this is by no means a record. It was tied by Slason Thompson of Old Elm, who was far from considering it a remarkable feat. It would be much more noteworthy if the Philadelphia person should eat 144 pies between sun-up and sun-down.

WINTER GOLF.

“All the benefits of outdoors winter golf in the tropics, at the Indoor Golf School.”—AD.

Within the grimy Loop’s environs, The rubber pill may be addressed, A man may swing his golfing irons, And let his fancy do the rest.

The murmur in the street below, The elevated’s boom and roar, Will sound—if fancy have it so— Like surf upon a tropic shore.

The air within the driving stall Does not suggest a Stilton cheese, To one whose mind is on the ball ’Tis fragrant as a tropic breeze.

We, upon whom the spell is laid, For tropic things care not a whoop, Imagination’s artful aid Will bring the tropics to the Loop.

The sun, the breeze, the fields, the rest— Of them let railway folders sing. We know, who are by golf obsessed, The Pill’s the thing! the Pill’s the thing.

* * * * *

“Pairfect,” said Mr. Joe MacMorran, when we indulged him in the pleasure of watching us swing a golf club. “The swing is pairfect. All ye need is control.” Or, as the distinguished Kansan said of hell and western Kansas, all that either place needs is water and good society.

* * * * *

During a golf match at Greenwich this week an approach by Vardon was so strong that the ball passed the green and hit a lady on the bounce, recoiling to the flag. “Some back spin!” cried another spectator.

THE PROPER SPIRIT.

Sir: I am resolved to essay the game of golf again after having yielded to discouragement for a season. But now I am fired by a new ambition. Reason has taught me that the greater the number of swats I can get at the pill the more I get for my money. This attribute of mind will enable me to preserve an even temper and measurably reduce (or reduce measurably) my output of rude language. I shall welcome on the bunkers or elsewhere the theory that I am better off where I am than where I’m going next. If I can get a hundred wallops in a round I get more fun and exercise than my friend who finishes in eighty, and is chesty about it.

MIKE.

* * * * *

“Have we too many golf clubs?” inquires the valued Post. It has always seemed so to us. We usually get around with a driver and a putter—one drive to the green and one putt to the hole.

OUR VILLAGE.

A well worn golf pencil was picked up by your correspondent. What scores it could tell of.

Brand Whitlock writes from St. Andrews that he had a fine time on the most famous links in the world, he especially enjoying the Scotch of the caddies.

In the great fourth-estate golf tournament, Old Pop Wells and Ye Ed qualified as captains of canal boats. We out-cussed Pop on the first round, but he more than evened things up on the second, we being two down at the end.

Ye scribe shot a game of golf with Chick Evans, who allowed that our clubs, bag, shoes, and hat are all o.k., and that all we need is a little skill.

Many are complaining that the golf season is at a conclusion; but, as the native at Lake George said, Hell, did you think it was going to be summer all the time?

The frost is on the niblick and the putter’s in the shock. When a man has to play in a couple of undershirts, flannel shirt, sweater, paper vest, and a mackinaw coat, it is time to hang up the fiddle and the bow, for as a fellow said, hownl can you play if you can’t follow through?

Ed Beck and Homer Chandler, accompanied occasionally by their wives, are motoring through the effete east, tearing up the golf courses en route.

* * * * *

Mr. Jack Hoag, for whose golfic opinions we entertain unmitigated respect, writes that “to hit a ball with a wooden club with the wrists loose is to have a feeling that the club itself is stopped when the ball is hit.” Therefore he advises tightening the grip at the impact. It pains us to differ with Mr. Hoag. A golf ball opposes to the clubhead hardly more resistance than a puff ball, as two minutes experimenting will show. Sounder advice, we think, is this: grip loosely or grip tightly, but never change throughout the stroke.

* * * * *

The mother of Hamilton Post, the golfer, was a Miss Stump; the wedding took place in Garrett Woods’ chapel, and the clergyman was Dr. Bockwood. Pass the matches.

FIRST AID TO THE GOLF DUB.

A prominent dub said to us one day: “I’ve taken a good many lessons, and every line of instruction I’ve received sounds perfectly foolish.”

Obviously, the instruction is at fault, for, next to rolling off a log, there is nothing easier than driving a ball with, say, a midiron.

Take a box of balls and an iron, and station yourself a short distance from a putting green. Lay the club on the ground; you won’t need it for ten minutes or so. Now, with your right hand pitch the balls, one by one, at the flag just as you would pitch an indoor baseball, or throw a bowling ball down an alley—underhand. The only difference between this motion and the golf stroke is that in the bowling “address” you face the pins, whereas in golf your left side is toward the pin. Hence the turn of the body.

After you have chucked the dozen balls, you will discover, if you are not utterly imbecile, two or three things: you can’t chuck the ball underhand when your right hand is shoulder high; the arm must come down first; your body has come part way round and your left hip has gone forward; and, of chief importance, the knuckles of your hand are underneath when the ball is dispatched.

Precisely the same motions are gone through with when you use the midiron. If, after half an hour’s practice, with or without the club, you can’t acquire the knack, you had better quit. You are hopeless.

We have a few remarks to make about the iron shots.

The two things sought for are distance and direction. Concerning the first we have nothing at present to offer; our conclusions have not yet jelled.

Direction is a simpler matter. Accuracy in approaching and good direction in longer shots may be acquired by the simple expedient of relaxing the grip of the right hand after the ball is struck—relaxing it, not slightly, but completely; the fingers barely retaining a hold on the club. Most duffers pull or drag all their iron shots away to the left of the flag; letting go with the right hand will remedy this. The left hand, the grip of which is constant throughout the stroke, goes merrily on its way, uncrumpled, unhampered and unchecked.

* * * * *

One can, at will, pull or slice a golf ball around a bunker or other obstruction, and we should think it possible to rifle a cannon in such a way that a round shell could be shot around a corner.

* * * * *

State convicts are to be employed on the public roads of Illinois. This will be good for the roads, and as good as golf for the convicts, as the work will “take them out in the open air.” And it is a more pleasant sight to watch a man mending a road than to watch a dub golfer ruining the turf of a fairgreen.

* * * * *

Cannery! Special delivery! “Playing superlative golf.”

* * * * *

The star player of Greenwich Golf Club is Mr. Topping, who may be related to F. Dub, whose name we saw once in an account of a golf match.

* * * * *

When, on a Saturday you have bought a golf club or tennis racket in a department store, has it occurred to you that the clerk who sold you the things would like to be setting forth that afternoon, like yourself, for a turn on the links, or in the park? It has? Then you are more thoughtful than some people.

SUNDAY GOLF.

There is Sunday golf at Onwentsia now, in the afternoon; the forenoon, which is the better half of the day, is set apart for church-going. A considerable time ago a well known pastor announced that if the members of a certain golf club would not come to the gospel he would take the gospel to the golfers, but, so far as we remember, no services were held at the home tee. “The better the day, the better the deed,” does not hold true of golf. As a friend jingles it—

“O, wad some power The giftie gie us To ken the days The Lord be wie us!”

THE GAME IN STAGELAND.

Mr. Collins, the dramatic reviewer of the Chicago Evening Post, has recently taken up the r. and a. g.; consequently his critical eye is cast upon characters in plays who are introduced in golfing regalia. He reports to us two interesting discoveries to date. In “Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath,” the contents of the golf bag consist of three brassies and four putters, and in “Good Bye, Boys,” the bag holds two drivers and a midiron. It is scarcely necessary to say that the realistic Mr. Belasco is not connected with either production.

* * * * *

Discovered again, the meanest man. Playing in a game that called for a penny a stroke, the pot to go to the Red Cross, he lifted when he pitched into a bunker, and conceded the hole.

FIRST AID.

A Goop writes: “What is good for sclaffing?”

(Reply: Any smooth piece of turf. Do not attempt to sclaff in tall grass, as the club might break on a concealed stone.)

Sherlock writes: “I look at the ball, but I top it just the same. What do you make of that, Watson?”

(Reply: Very likely you look at the ball with your left eye, instead of your right. The right eye, being farther from the ball, can see farther under it. The cleanest hitter we know has a left eye of glass.)

Moron writes: “I am a chronic slicer; so desperate is my disease, I have to allow for the slice on every shot, even in practice swings. Can anything be done?”

(Reply: Cut out meats, eat plenty of green vegetables, and take long walks in the open air—which is really the most convenient place for long walks. Report to us again in three years.)

Fluff writes: “With a strong wind blowing from east to west, should I slice or pull?”

(Reply: You neglect to say whether you are going north or south. If you are going south, pray give our regards to the bunch at Belleair.)

* * * * *

A valued reader, Mr. D. Precox, writes us that, after testing a suggestion we advanced in March, he perfectly agrees that topping is invited by regarding the ball with the left eye, but discouraged by regarding it with the right. “Unfortunately,” he communicates, “my left eye is not of glass, like your cleanest hitter’s, nor can I break it of the habit of looking at the ball. In these critical circumstances what would you advise?” We can only refer Mr. Precox to the best of authorities. If his left eye offends him, let him pluck it out. No sacrifice is too great. What is an eye more or less when a perfect pitch to the pin is demanded?

BULWER LYTTON ON GOLF.

In hands of golfing men entirely great The swing is mightier than the club.

* * * * *

“I ask your indulgence, gentlemen,” said the new President of the U. S. G. A., “if I make any mistakes in my more or less ignorance of parliamentary procedure.” Our advice to President Perrin is that he take a niblick when he gets into trouble. There is nothing better for quelling a cantankerous delegate.

THE PENDULUM PUTT.

As we find the theories of others are more diverting than our own, which are merely scientific, we shall but seldom intrude an opinion, and then only for the purpose of adding to the general confusion. Thus we may take this occasion to record that the so-called Pendulum Putt is an overpraised institution. Any man, or almost any man, may become a grandfather, but no man can be grandfather’s clock; a tall clock has no nerves and no muscles, and it lives a quiet, regular life. The Pendulum Putt is not more inevitable than another. In our laboratory experiments we have putted in every language, including the Scandinavian and Profane, and have found that the hole can be missed as easily by one method as by another. The least attractive style is that which requires a consideration of their navels (known in California as “sunkist navels”), and a strict adherence of the putter blade to the line o’ flight. The method we finally adopted does not require that the putter be taken back or brought forward on any invariable, ineluctable line; any line, within reason, will do. That decided on, putting ceased to be as troublesome as a hair shirt, and we now approach the green sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, instead of like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon.

* * * * *

Mr. Chick Evans drove two or three dozen golf balls into the west wind once for our special delectation, and golf dubs will be glad to learn that after analyzing Mr. Chick’s stroke we concluded that the great secret of golf and the only secret, is rhythm. Mr. Chick’s rhythm is perfect. The morning stars have nothing on him.

ON THE FIRING LINE.

At thought of what may hap to-day I’m not disturbed a bit; And who may triumph in the fray Perplexes me no whit.

The doings in Convention hall Afford me no concern; I do not speculate at all On how the tide will turn.

I ask not who may hit or miss, Who perish, who survive: The thing that bothers me is this— _Why did I hook that drive?_

GOLFING WISDOM FROM THE ANCIENTS.

Where there’s a will there’s no sway.

SIMPLIFIED SPORT.

Sir: A golfing friend of mine was telling a friend, not a golfer, how difficult it was to play over the ditch on our course. The party of the second part said, “Why don’t they fill up the ditch?”

A. H. R.

Waterloo, Ia.

(Your party of the second part is evidently related to the old lady who, watching a tennis game, asks, “Why don’t they take down the net?”)

* * * * *

The new professional at our club is Mr. Al Falfa, winner of last year’s open, when he pitched a ton of hay in six forks under par. Mr. Falfa uses the closed stance in pitching, as he believes it facilitates the follow-through. In hoeing, however, he inclines to a square stance, the feet being close together. As adviser to the greens committee, he advocates dandelions and dock as being superior to spinach. As a majority of our club is going in for gardening, the new pro’s teaching time is already filled.

QUAD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM.

At Old Elm last fall we were knocking around in a foursome, one member of which was a visitor from the east. We paired with him, but he was unaware of the singular honor accorded him. After apologizing for missing a short putt, he confided to us that his putting had been ruined by his following the advice of a writer in some golf magazine, who advocated looking at the hole instead of the ball. “If ever I meet that chap,” said he, “I’ll take a niblick to him.” As we dislike violent scenes, we did not enlighten the gentleman.

Quite otherwise the case of Old Al Dennis of Skokie, whom we persuaded to give the theory a trial. For several seasons he has looked at the hole while putting, and is wholly satisfied with the result. Why wake him up?

Of 365 persons who use the expression “the psychology of golf,” 365 know nothing of psychology, and 273 can spell the word. As it happens, one of our friends is a distinguished psychologist and something of a golfer, and our conversations have been more or less illuminating. We may report some of them in this incomparable department of uplift.

* * * * *

Mr. Punch gives us a picture of a golfer subduing a burglar with a cleek, and Mr. Fox shows us a golfer pitching coals into his furnace with a mashie. So perhaps the missus will admit that the game is not an utter waste of time.

* * * * *

Mr. Varden’s game is a drive, a mashie, and a couple of putts. Thanks to temperament and years of practice, he has concentration and perfect control of his muscles. Self-control is nearly all of golf, and few people play seventies because few people possess self-control.

We do not envy the man with the vegetable temperament. The man we envy is the man with the nervous temperament, who has acquired control of himself. He may not live so long as the vegetable person, but while he is living he is living.

* * * * *

Considerable golfer, Mr. Ouimet. Or is it pronounced Ouimet?

* * * * *

About this “perfect golf” or “faultless golf” that figures so frequently in the accounts of matches. It isn’t. For if a par four, allowing two putts, is perfect golf, one under par would be “more perfect.” One under par—one putt on each green—would be perfect golf, and this is accomplished by good players frequently and by ordinary players occasionally.

* * * * *

They have been playing golf at Bayside for the Mary Garden cup. Another clever substitute for losing one’s jewels.

* * * * *

Mr. Darwin, who knows how to play golf as well as how to write about it, has pleasantly but plainly indicated that there is a difference between a real golf course and the usual links to be found hereabouts. Any course on which a player can slice or hook badly without penalty is fit only for lady golfers or for males who are content to slop around in ninety-something with nothing worthier in view than winning a “syndicate” from two or three other dubbers.

* * * * *

Anybody can drive a golf ball a considerable distance, but not every one can drive in a straight line. The man who CAN do it should be rewarded with a good lie for his second. The man who can’t should experience the terrors of the pit and the jungle. After a season of continuous punishment he may do one of two things—quit the game, or learn how to play it.

* * * * *

The dear old _Saturday Review_ has discovered, to its own satisfaction, why Vardon and Ray were beaten by Ouimet. The concentrated will power of the gallery did it, and the idea, says the S. R., “is based upon the latest teachings of psychology.” “Englishmen,” it adds, “are seldom at their best when playing games in America.”

Can you—as Baucis inquired of Philemon—beat it? Apparently the denser atmosphere of the British Isles is a non-conductor of psychological force; otherwise, Mr. McLoughlin could not have brought home the Davis Cup, and Heinrich Schmidt could not have held Harold Hilton until the last gun was fired.

* * * * *

Women are queer. They can’t see the difference between playing eighteen holes of golf and digging eighteen shrub holes in a garden.

* * * * *

Al Seckel is our notion of the Height of Affluence. His valet caddies for him.

* * * * *

Another cousin of Young Grimes, reports D. M. V., refers to a w. k. golf implement as a Skenecaddy putter.

* * * * *

Entrants for the Printers’ Golf tournament were requested to “hole all puts and replace all pivots.” A proofroom foozle.

THE GOLFER’S PRIMER