Golf, indeed, is the one world game; it is in essence that very simple
sport which so easily and certainly spreads over the planet. Everywhere
the British are pioneers, and they are by far the more numerous players;
but native proselytes are coming in fast in almost every quarter of the
globe, so now it may fairly be said that no other game is being played
everywhere by so many different sorts of people as this game of ours.
Sit on a magic carpet and be transported to any place, and there,
somewhere about you, will be a golf course.
I have lately had some talk with men from the East, who tell of the good
game that half-naked tribesmen, standing and walking in bare feet, have
learned to play; and, moreover, of the beautiful clubs, most exquisitely
finished and sometimes inlaid with ivory and fancy woods, that they have
made. I am assured that the “professional champion of Ceylon” is a
Cingalese caddie who holds the record for the Ridgeway course, made when
he was playing against a British golfer of thoroughly good class. The
Japanese are beginning to play, and good judges have been led to express
fears that their qualities and temperaments will bring them to a higher
state of perfection in the short game than has ever been attained
before, and which will surely threaten the supremacy of the white man.
Golfing at Kobe is a peculiar experience. The course is at Rokkosan, on
the top of a high mountain, and you must therefore climb the mountain
before you can golf on the course. You go by rickshaw to the foot of the
Cascade Valley, and are then carried up the mountain slope by coolies
for an hour and a half, when the tees and the bunkers come into view.
Those who play there hold that the view from this course is the finest
from any, though it can hardly be better than that from the course on
the top of Senchal Hill at Darjeeling, for from here there is
Kingenjunga, 28,000 feet high, to be seen, and from the summit of Tiger
Hill, overlooking the course, there is Mount Everest itself in view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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