Golf stories, English; Golfers -- Fiction; Humorous stories, English
Now, normally, Bradbury Fisher was essentially a dasher. It was his
habit, as a rule, to raise his left foot some six inches from the
ground, and having swayed forcefully back on to his right leg, to
sway sharply forward again and lash out with sickening violence in
the general direction of the ball. It was a method which at times
produced excellent results, though it had the flaw that it was somewhat
uncertain. Bradbury Fisher was the only member of the club, with the
exception of the club champion, who had ever carried the second green
with his drive; but, on the other hand, he was also the only member
who had ever laid his drive on the eleventh dead to the pin of the
sixteenth.
But to-day the magnitude of the issues at stake had wrought a change
in him. Planted firmly on both feet, he fiddled at the ball in the
manner of one playing spillikens. When he swung, it was with a swing
resembling that of Gladstone Bott; and, like Bott, he achieved a nice,
steady, rainbow-shaped drive of some seventy yards straight down the
middle. Bott replied with an eighty-yard brassie shot. Bradbury held
him with another. And so, working their way cautiously across the
prairie, they came to the green, where Bradbury, laying his third putt
dead, halved the hole.
The second was a repetition of the first, the third and fourth
repetitions of the second. But on the fifth green the fortunes of the
match began to change. Here Gladstone Bott, faced with a fifteen-foot
putt to win, smote his ball firmly off the line, as had been his
practice at each of the preceding holes, and the ball, hitting a
worm-cast and bounding off to the left, ran on a couple of yards, hit
another worm-cast, bounded to the right, and finally, bumping into a
twig, leaped to the left again and clattered into the tin.
“One up,” said Gladstone Bott. “Tricky, some of these greens are. You
have to gauge the angles to a nicety.”
At the sixth a donkey in an adjoining field uttered a raucous bray just
as Bott was addressing his ball with a mashie-niblick on the edge of
the green. He started violently and, jerking his club with a spasmodic
reflex action of the forearm, holed out.
“Nice work,” said Gladstone Bott.
The seventh was a short hole, guarded by two large bunkers between
which ran a narrow foot-path of turf. Gladstone Bott’s mashie-shot,
falling short, ran over the rough, peered for a moment into the depths
to the left, then, winding up the path, trickled on to the green,
struck a fortunate slope, acquired momentum, ran on, and dropped into
the hole.
“Nearly missed it,” said Gladstone Bott, drawing a deep breath.
* * * * *
Bradbury Fisher looked out upon a world that swam and danced before his
eyes. He had not been prepared for this sort of thing. The way things
were shaping, he felt that it would hardly surprise him now if the cups
were to start jumping up and snapping at Bott’s ball like starving dogs.
“Three up,” said Gladstone Bott.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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