Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
Then, as we all were looking about, in much surprise, a man spoke up. He
was a Mr. Kirk, a townsman of St. Andrews and a fine golfer. He took
part in the first amateur championship when it was played at St.
Andrews, but he had come to this one as a spectator only. He said,
"Well--I did think I felt a tug at my pocket." (By this time we all were
very much intrigued to imagine what could have happened to the ball.)
And at that he looked into the outside breast pocket of his coat; and
there the ball lay, on his handkerchief, like an egg in a nest.
Has a more wonderful thing ever happened at golf? I, at all events, have
never heard of any more extraordinary series of small marvels ever
taking place. In the first instance it was wonderful enough that the
ball should thus plump down so cleanly and neatly into the pocket at
all; then that none of the score or so of watchers should have seen it;
next, that not even the man into whose pocket it thus plumped should
have noticed it as it came down, imperilling his very nose and eyes;
and, finally, that it should have landed so gently that he did not
actually realize that anything had struck him--only "fancied he felt
something tug at his pocket." Naturally, if it were not for the cloud of
witnesses, I should never have ventured to tell the tale. My own
character, if I have any, for veracity is not nearly high enough to
stand such a strain.
These are the facts; and then of course arose the question as to what
should be done with the ball. As it happened, it did not arise in a form
very acute, because Andy Stuart was well on the green in two and I, in
Mr. Kirk's pocket, standing on the edge of the green, in three. We
agreed finally that the pocket should be emptied where the pocketer
stood, and from there I played out the hole and lost it. It is almost a
question whether such a shot as this did not deserve to win the hole.
Curiously enough the only other golfer I ever knew who played a ball
into a man's pocket is Andy Stuart himself. He hit a full drive right
into the coat tail pocket of Lord Lee, the Scottish Lord of Session. But
his lordship was very far from being unaware, like Mr. Kirk, of the
pocketing. He was quite painfully aware of it. As Andy was at that time
at the Scottish Bar, it seems to me that it was a very injudicious
stroke for him, as a rising young advocate, to play.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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