The golfer may not be conscious of it, but the effect is there. How true
this is may be judged by taking the extreme case of the motor-bicycle. A
year or two ago large numbers of golfers who could not afford motor-cars
went in for the cheaper kind of machine, but to a man they found them
quite fatal to golf, and particularly to their putting, the vibration
having reduced their nerves to such a state that delicacy of touch on
the putting green was next to impossible. Ordinary bicycles are nearly
as bad. In many respects motor-cars have great advantages, and have
become very popular with golfers, but they are far from being the ideal
form of locomotion. Here, again, there is vibration, and if you have
anything in the nature of a fright on the road you may generally reckon
that your game for the day is damaged to the extent of a number of
strokes that varies with the individual. Having all these things and
many more in mind, the superiority of the aeroplane, from the golfer’s
point of view, becomes evident. It will take you from your door to the
first tee, and, as there are no roads to jolt upon, one conceives that
in the perfect aeroplane there will be no vibration, and, barring the
effects of his breakfast, the golfer will be transported to the links in
as nearly as possible the ideal state in which he rose from his bed.
XIII
Some footpaths count for very much in the playing of a hole, and at
times call for and produce fine shots that would never be made if there
were no path there. So sometimes they are good to the game; but
generally they are merely an aggravation. You could hardly call a path
or a road famous, but if you were asked which were the most notable you
would probably call to mind first of all the path that goes across the
first and eighteenth holes at St. Andrews, which is distinguished from
others because of the devil-may-care spirit in which the general public
defy injury and death by the way they saunter along it when such men as
Edward Blackwell are standing on the first tee, and it is also a path
among paths, because it has led to the cultivation of the most
magnificent voice ever heard on any golf course. The man who has not
heard Starter Greig fire his blast of warning through the hole in his
box down the fairway--with a clap, and a bang against the horizon, for
all the world like a discharge from a small brass gun--is still ignorant
of one of the minor wonders of the golf world, and has a very inadequate
perception of the possibilities of calling “Fore!” Likewise, one would
say that of all roads--as superior to mere paths--that which skirts the
seventeenth green on the same old course is the most remembered by the
majority of good golfers--remembered sadly. How many golfers have had
their brightest hopes dashed by that road when within sight of home and
victory it would be a sorry task to count, but there lingers in my mind
a dreadful scene when J. H. Taylor’s ball went there in the course of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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