Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
Going to Hoylake, therefore, we were sure of finding ourselves among
friends. I think there were at that time, at Hoylake, in pilgrimage from
Westward Ho! besides myself, Captain Ashton, a sound golfer of the
second class, Major Hopkins, the golfing artist, Captain Logan White,
most amusing and caustic-tongued of companions. The native people showed
us no little kindness. Only a short while before I had taken part in a
match at Westward Ho! got up by the never-failing keenness of Captain
Molesworth--he and I against John Dunn, a famous man at Hoylake (there
is a hole named after him there to-day) and Jack Morris. We had won that
match handsomely, but there was no scrap of ill-feeling. Then there was
Kennard there--Colonel Hegan Kennard--ever most courteous, and arrayed
with beautiful neatness; a player of great neatness besides, and winner
of many scratch medals. There were also three generations of John Ball
at the Royal Hotel, and already the youngest of the team was of great
local repute and of such skill that his father would often issue the
proud challenge to the company assembled in the bar-parlour of the
hotel: "I and my son'll play any two." But those two were not very eager
in coming forward. The rooms of the Royal Liverpool Club were in those
days under the same roof as the Royal Hotel itself and the course
started with what is now the eighteenth hole. Argyll Robertson was
there, from Scotland, a first-class golfer, and surely the finest
advertisement of his own profession, which was that of oculist, that
ever was seen, for he was a singularly handsome man altogether, but the
most striking feature of his fine looks was an eye more eagle-like than
I ever saw in any other human face. There was also another little Scot
of very different aspect, short, rather round-about with sloping
shoulders like a champagne bottle, yet a terrible golfer and a
thrice-champion--Jamie Anderson. Him I knew, he had been down to
Westward Ho! taking part against Jamie Allan in a campaign of revenge
for that defeat which the latter had put upon Scotland (for we looked on
Jamie Allan's golf as wholly English) and on the man whom Scotland had
previously pitted against him, Bob Kirk. Jamie Anderson, playing him on
the same four greens of St. Andrews, Prestwick, Hoylake and Westward Ho!
had defeated him--not heavily, but sufficiently. But Jamie Allan at that
time was not playing as he had played against Bob Kirk. It was a fine
game enough, but it had not the same force and sting. I had even enjoyed
the honour of playing a foursome at Westward Ho! with Jamie Anderson,
and had wrung from him a compliment which pleased me more than a little,
for at one hole I had pitched up a long iron shot with some cut on it,
and a happy chance decreed that the ball should stop about six inches
from the hole. All Jamie said to me at the moment was "Ah--that's the
sort that saves a lot of trouble;" but afterwards he had counselled me,
"You should come up to St.
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