Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
This going over of Jack Graham to the enemy, as we regarded it,
introduced another small trouble into the International Match. It was
always said (with what basis of fact I hardly know) that it would cause
too much "feeling" in Hoylake if he were pitted against either Johnny
Ball or Harold Hilton in this match. So the sides had to be so arranged
that this terrible thing should not happen--it was all rather farcical.
As it was, I had to play Jack Graham in the first International Match,
which was at Hoylake, and took a sound beating from him. That first
fight was the occasion of a battle royal between Johnny Ball and Bobby
Maxwell, the former only winning, though it was on his own green, by a
single hole on the thirty-six. During these years Bobby was rather
regarded as the champion of the Scottish amateurs, and the International
Match would be notable, if for nothing else, for the Homeric contests
between these two. The most fantastic of them happened in the year when
exceptionally, as I have noted above, the match was played before, not
after, the amateur championship. It was at Muirfield, in 1903, when I
got into the final, only to be beaten handsomely there by Bobby Maxwell.
We played the International Match the next day, and I had to fight Fred
Mackenzie, who afterwards went as a professional to America and is now
at home again and playing very good golf at St. Andrews. He did not play
very good golf that day, however, though it was good enough to beat me;
for I found myself not tired exactly, but utterly indifferent, after all
the strain of the championship, which I had had to endure up to the
final round, and could not tune myself up to concert pitch at all. But
on Bobby it was very clear that the strain had not told in anything like
the same way. He played extraordinarily. I do not believe that Johnny
Ball played badly at all, yet he was beaten, I think, by more holes than
any other man ever has lost in the International Match. Whenever he did
a hole in a stroke over the right number, Bobby Maxwell did it in the
right number; and whenever Johnny did it in the right number, Bobby
performed a miracle and did it in one less.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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