Johnny was playing with Willy Campbell, poor Willy Campbell, splendid player, most gallant of match-fighters, certainly deserving of championship honours and only missing them on the last occasion of the championship being played at Prestwick by one of those fatal accidents, very near home, bar which, as aforesaid, Johnny Ball was bound to win the championship of 1890. But poor Willy on that occasion got heavily bunkered; lost his head a little and perhaps his temper more than a little. He had strokes to spare; but he wasted them hammering in that bunker, and when I came into Charlie Hunter's shop at Prestwick half an hour later I saw a sad sight. Willy Campbell was sitting on an upturned bucket on one side of the door, his caddie had a similar humble seat on the other side of the door, and both were weeping bitterly. This, however, is a digression into a vale of tears. Johnny Ball did not digress into any such vale. He continued the scoring of the right figures and accomplished the great feat, for an amateur, of winning the open championship. It was a win which made a difference. It seemed at once to bring the open championship within the practical horizon of the amateur for all years to come. It had broken a spell. Incidentally it may be noted that it put Johnny Ball's name higher than any other's had ever been, for he held the championship of the amateurs and of the professionals at the same time. And what interested me much at the moment was the attitude of the professionals towards the result. I had expected that they would feel rather injured by seeing the championship which they had been used to regard as theirs going to an amateur. To my surprise that did not appear to disconcert them in the least. What they did resent, however, so far as resentment may be carried within the limits of perfectly good sportsmanship, was that it should be won by an Englishman. You see, it was not only the first time that it had ever been won by any other than a professional, but also the first time it ever had been won by any other than a Scot. That is a fact which will strike the reader with astonishment now perhaps, when the poor Scots must have become fairly well inured to Englishmen annexing the championship. Taylor and Vardon, to say nothing of Harold Hilton, have taught them to grin and bear it as best they may. But up to that time a Scot had ever been open champion of the game of Scotland, and Scotland did not much like another taking it.