Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
And then this thrill of new golfing life started at Westward Ho!
communicated itself to the many Scots established in Liverpool, so that
in 1869 they so far organised themselves as to institute that which is
now the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, playing at Hoylake. What that meant
for us at Westward Ho! was that men of Hoylake came down to play matches
with our local heroes and to take part in our medal competitions. There
were Mr. John Dunn and Mr. John Ball, the father of our many times
champion. Colonel Hegan Kennard was another who was associated with the
Hoylake club, though his association with Blackheath was closer--of that
venerable Club he was Field Marshal for very many years. But some of the
first of the big matches, matches with sums of money depending on their
result which seemed to me fabulous in days when a sixpence in the pocket
was a rare coin, were those which were planned by the enterprise of
Captain Molesworth--himself and Johnnie Allan in partnership against Mr.
John Dunn and Jack Morris, who had come as professional to Hoylake. Now
John Dunn made very much more show as a player than the old Mole. "The
mole--an animal that keeps to the ground" was a definition which we used
to be fond of quoting as we grew out of the years of veneration to those
of impertinence. He had an absolute inability to drive the ball any
height in the air. No other man ever played golf so cheaply as the old
Mole: he had but three clubs, sometimes profanely stigmatized as Faith,
Hope and Charity, a driving weapon of sorts, an iron and a putter, which
he carried himself, never taking a caddie, and his ball was generally of
the colour of a coal from long and ill usage. But he would bet you £50
on a match if you cared about it, and would play you with fine pluck to
the very finish. He was in fact a miserable driver; nor was there any
"class" or science at all about his iron play. But he would shovel the
ball along, and up to the green somehow or other with his iron: he had a
knack of getting there; and when once on the green there was not nor
ever has been a better putter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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