Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
Altogether that was a comfortable championship. After the first thrill
of the terror inspired by the reputation of "the mon Fogie," it went on
oiled wheels. Mure Ferguson, I remember, whom I met in a later heat, was
a hole up going to the eleventh, and I was a little anxious, but he let
me win in the end, though only by a hole, and then it looked very much
as if I should have to play Johnny Ball in the final--which was never to
be regarded as a holiday. But the unexpected happened. In the semi-final
he had to meet Henry Lamb. Henry Lamb was a beautiful golfer. It was he
who invented the "bulger," that club with its convex face, off which the
ball flew with a straightness that was a revelation. You see, before the
bulger was invented, the faces of our wooden clubs, by the perpetual
contact and hammering of the hard "gutty" balls, always got worn away,
so that instead of being flat, they were very decidedly concave. And you
may understand what the effect of that gradient of face would be--to
emphasize and aggravate every sin of heeling or toeing to which golfing
flesh is heir. Therefore, the good influence of the bulger was not
really so much in introducing the first convexity, though that in itself
helped the ball to go straight off it, but it also corrected that fatal
concavity which all clubs soon assumed of which the faces were flat to
start with. Instead of being concave, after much battering, the face of
the bulger became merely flat.
So it was a blessed invention; and as to its inventor, he was not only a
player of a very fine and graceful game of golf, but he was also the
most delightful fellow to play with that could be imagined. He had a
temper which in its perfect serenity was a most valuable golfing asset
to himself, and also most valuable in the charm of the companionship
which it brought into a round of golf with him. His mode of addressing
the ball was remarkable, for he stood as if he were going to drive at an
angle of at least forty-five degrees to the right of the hole. I
remember, at some inland course in the South, where his strange method
was not known, a caddie calling out to him as he was on the point of
driving from the first tee: "Stop, stop, you're playing to the wrong
hole." Henry Lamb gave the boy one of his sweetest and most lamb-like
smiles, and proceeded to drive the ball two hundred yards straight down
the middle of the course--to square leg. He used to swing round so far
as he came down that really it was to the cricketer's square leg that he
drove; and yet his style was a singularly graceful one, which seems as
if it could not be. It was a singularly effective one no less, and he
was a medallist on most of the courses then known to the golfer. Still,
he was not a Johnny Ball. On that day, however, he proved himself a
greater than Johnny Ball, who was far from being at his best, and when I
came in from my own semi-final effort I learned, with a breath of even
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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