CHAPTER IV.

THE WEST AND SOUTH-WEST.

It would clearly be unbecoming to treat the western and south-western courses in strict geographical order, because there is one honoured name which must come first, that of =Westward Ho!=--the oldest seaside golf course in England. The Royal North Devon Club was founded in 1864, and when the golf at Westward Ho! was in its infancy it was fostered and encouraged by Mr. George Glennie of St. Andrews celebrity, who played much of his golf at Blackheath, so that the famous flinty old course on the heath may claim to be a kind of god-parent to the sandhills and rushes of Northam Burrows.

To go to Westward Ho! is not to make a mere visit of pleasure as to an ordinary course; it is, as is the case of a few other great links, a reverent pilgrimage. Was it not here that Mr. Horace Hutchinson and J. H. Taylor, besides a host of other fine players, learned the game? and surely, it may be added in parenthesis, no golfing nursery has ever turned out two infant prodigies with such unique and dissimilar styles. Has it not the tallest and spikiest rushes in the world, and the biggest bunker to carry from the tee? and, lastly, has it not lately been remodelled and reformed and made so difficult that many will compare it, not even with bated breath, to St. Andrews. Therefore, the stranger, as he jogs along in the little train from Bideford and looks out at the white horses in Barnstaple Bay, may be pardoned if he is in a state of suppressed excitement and full of the highest hopes. In truth, it is a splendid course for which he is bound, and not only is it wonderfully difficult and wonderfully interesting, but it has a charm that is given to but few links. It looks more like a good golf course than almost any other course in the world. Not perhaps when we first emerge from the club-house, for the first three holes lie upon a rather flat and marshy piece of ground, but as soon as we get to the fourth hole it is obvious that the burrows were ordained by providence for no other than their present purpose. From the high tee to the fifth hole we get a view of a perfect stretch of golfing country, broken and undulating with the sandhills on the left and a vast expanse of rushes on the right, for, in spite of much pruning and uprooting, there are still plenty of the famous rushes left. It is a sight to make glad the heart of man, and at the same time to fill him with gloomy doubts as to whether he is quite good enough to play upon such a course.

Another great attraction about Westward Ho! is its supreme naturalness. It looks for all the world as if some golfing adventurer had merely had to stroll out with a hole-cutter, a bundle of flags, and perhaps a light roller, and had made the course in less than no time. Many bunkers have been cut, of course, but with one exception they look quite inartificial, and do not take away from the wonderful impression of naturalness made by the greens. Sometimes the hole is on a plateau or in a hollow, and then it is obvious that Nature and not any human architect has been at work; no man could have devised those jutting promontories, those little irregular bays, which are so alluring. Sometimes, again, the greens lie flat and open, and then they blend so imperceptibly and harmoniously with the surrounding country that it is impossible to say where the green ends and "through the green" begins, for the turf is quite beautiful. Some years ago a pestilence of weeds seized upon it, and the lies and greens of Westward Ho! were in grave danger of losing their reputation, but with infinite patience and trouble the weeds have been removed and the turf is once more itself again, crisp and smooth, and withal full of life and run.

It has often been said and written that the feature of the golf at Westward Ho! is that the ball must be placed with each shot, and it is, I think, on the whole, a sound criticism. It is often possible to hit the ball very crooked without being immediately punished, but in nearly every case the next shot will be an exceedingly difficult one. I do not know the course quite as well as I could wish, but the seventh hole comes into my head as a good example. Here it is possible to pull considerably from the tee without getting anything but a perfect lie, but then, between the player and the hole, close to the green, there stretches a phalanx of pot-bunkers, whereas the man who has played well out to the right over the guiding flag, has an easy and open approach. At the ninth, again, there is vast prairie into which to drive, but it is only by keeping well out to the right that we shall be able to hook the ball round on to that cunning plateau green; that little pot-bunker in the face of the plateau will most effectually put the man who has hooked from the tee, into a quandary.

It is not perhaps quite justifiable to include wind in a list of the permanent difficulties of any course, but, as far as my experience goes, it is always blowing hard at Westward Ho! I am told that when Braid did his 69, he had a still day, and I certainly believe it, for the reason that no human man could play such a round in a high wind; it is almost incredibly good in a dead calm. Personally, however, I have never found anything but a fine fresh wind blowing, a wind from the west that causes one to slice woefully on the way out and hook horribly on the way home. I revisited Westward Ho! after a lamentably long absence of some ten years, and found the same wind still blowing, and it brought vividly back to me the recollections of how for one solid week I had sliced my tee-shots twice daily at the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh holes.

No course ever had more convincing testimony paid to its difficulties than did Westward Ho! at that Easter of slicing memory in 1900. There was a team of the Royal Liverpool Club with Mr. Hilton to lead it--Mr. Ball and Mr. Graham were not there; there was a strong team of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society; and there were all the local champions. Yet out of that field Mr. Horace Hutchinson won the Kashmir Cup with a score of 179, which represents, unless my arithmetic be at fault, but one under an average of five strokes a hole. It was in truth the most desperately difficult golf, and there was but one player who seemed able to triumph over it. That was the late Mr. J. A. T. Bramston, then a freshman at Oxford, who for the first time showed the world in general what a magnificent golfer he was. He played in four team matches against the most redoubtable opponents, and beat them all. He beat Mr. Hutchinson by a number of holes so large that it would be kinder to draw a discreet veil over the details, and Mr. John Low by a smaller but still very sufficient margin. Mr. Hilton and Mr. Humphrey Ellis (then at his very best, and how terribly good that best was!) he defeated by some two or three holes apiece. It was the most brilliant week in a brilliant and all too short career.

If Westward Ho! was difficult then--albeit with a gutty ball--how difficult must it be now, when Mr. Fowler has stretched it and bunkered it, so that there are some ready to rise up and call him not blessed. The one alleviation is that the rushes have been cut away in a good many places, and though bunkers have replaced them, no bunker is so fatal as a Westward Ho! rush, which is as tall as the golfer himself, and a great deal stronger. Practically the only criticism now to be made is in its essence a futile one, namely, that it is a pity that providence did not see fit to bring the true sandy golfing country up to the club-house door, instead of interposing that short stretch of low-lying and rather depressing marshland.

There the marsh is, however, and the best has undoubtedly been made of it, so that the first three and the last two holes, if they have no particular fascination, are thoroughly good and difficult: more difficult, indeed, than some of the more attractive ones. The first hole demands two very long, straight shots, for there is a ditch to catch a slice and only a narrow opening to the green. The second, again, is a fine, long driving hole, a little 'dog-legged' in character, and at the third, which is a short one, the green is beleaguered with pot-bunkers on every side. Yet this third hole shows that there are limits to what human ingenuity can do, for the hole is as difficult as can be, and yet of so flat and melancholy an appearance that one could scarcely feel any warm affection for it.

By this time we are close to the famous 'Pebble Ridge,' and the real golfing country begins with the fourth hole, a fine two-shot hole with a well-guarded green. Next comes the fifth, and in front of the tee there is a bunker so colossal that the carry looks at first sight to be impossible. A good long carry it certainly is, but it is not nearly so appalling as it looks; a well struck ball will career gaily over it, and, if we feel frightened, we can make the carry a little shorter by going to the right. A moderate pitch will take us home after the drive, and this is true not only of the fifth, but of the sixth and seventh also.

It is just a little unfortunate that these holes, which have a good many features in common, should come so close together, for their doing so imparts just a suspicion of weakness to this part of the course. In each case there is a stirring tee-shot from a high tee, and if that be well struck we may then pitch easily home, although the greens are very well protected, and should have a comfortable string of fours. There is a spot further on among the hills to the left where some desire that the green should be placed, and if ever it is done, not only the sixth but indirectly the fifth and seventh will also be benefitted.

The eighth is an interesting little short hole--an extremely difficult one from the back tee--and after that come two of the finest holes in golf, the ninth and tenth.

The ninth green lies in a hollow on the top of a small plateau at the range of two very full shots from the tee, and the superlative virtue of the hole consists in a little unobtrusive pot-bunker, before alluded to, in the face of the hill. We can hardly hope to drive far enough to carry the bunker in our second, and if we could it would scarcely be possible to stay on the green. Therefore, we must drive well out to the right, and hope to reach the green with a subtle hook. The ground breaks in towards the hole from the right, and so a perfectly played shot, with just sufficient hook, will keep turning and turning towards the hole, till it totters with its last gasp down the last slope and lies close to the hole. Often, of course, it will be out of the question to get home in two, but the hole will still be interesting, and our approach shot anything but a simple one.

The tenth affords a standing example of what a 'dog-legged' hole should be, and it is here that we come really to close quarters with the rushes. There is a vast tract of them in front of the tee, and if we could carry some three hundred and more yards no doubt we could reach the green in one. Assuming, however, that our driving powers are more limited, we drive well out to the right, carrying just as many yards of rushes as we safely dare; then, turning to the left, we play our second between the rushes on one side and rough country on the other over a bunker and on to a narrow gully of a green. With a favourable wind we may hope to get home easily enough with an iron, but when two really full shots are needed, it is a hole for gods and heroes.

Next we come to some of the new holes. At the eleventh we drive not over but down an avenue of rushes, and must then play a shot which is curiously rare at Westward Ho!--a high, quickly stopping pitch over a cross-bunker. The twelfth and thirteenth are both good two-shot holes, the former, with a green most sternly bunkered, and the latter, with a lovely little plateau green. This plateau looks so eminently natural that I have once fallen into the error of describing it as such, thereby doing grave injustice to Mr. Fowler, who built it in the middle of a flat plain.

Fourteen is a short hole with a bunker in front and rushes in the neighbourhood: a good hole, but comparatively ordinary, and certainly not so attractive as the other short hole, the sixteenth. This is but the length of a mashie pitch, but what a difficult pitch it is! When I last played it the wind blew strongly from left to right, and the inhuman green-keeper had cut the hole in the left-hand corner of the green. To pitch right up to the hole was to run far over the green; to be at all short meant a pot-bunker, while a ball with the least suspicion of cut would tear away to the right and end, in all probability, in another bunker. It seemed to be almost necessary to pitch on a particular bump, on a particular hill just short of the flag--a desperate task.

I must go back for a minute to praise the fifteenth, a hole which has the added interest of alternative routes, according as we drive to right or left of a formidable hedge of furze, and then we come to a parlous long hole, the seventeenth. There is a ditch guarding the green, but before we arrive at the approaching stage, we must hit first of all a good tee-shot, and then a good brassey shot, over a rampart of terrible appearance. This is the one bunker on the course which is, from an artistic point of view, unworthy of it. It does indeed look as if it had been transplanted from some inland park, but do not let us be too hard on it, for there is much joy in the carrying of it.

At the last hole we should, with a good second shot, carry the burn and get a four, but there is a gentleman waiting with a net to fish our ball out if we fail, and the sight of him is apt to have a horribly destructive effect. If we go into the burn we shall be reminded of the fact when we are paying for our caddie, by the demand for the recognized toll of one penny for its rescue. Finally, no account of Westward Ho! would be complete without a reference to the tea at the club-house. There is a particular form of roll cut in half and liberally plastered with Devonshire cream and jam. Epithets fail me, and I can only declare that the tea is worthy of the golf.

From Westward Ho! we may cross the border into Cornwall, a thing infinitely more easy to do in the imagination than in a train. Cornwall has several pleasant courses--Newquay, Lelant, St. Enodoc, and Bude, amongst others. Of these, St. Enodoc is a course of wonderful natural possibilities, and for that matter there is a rather solitary, inaccessible piece of land near Hale, not far from Lelant, where might be made one of _the_ golf courses of the world. So at least it seemed to me as I wandered once on a Sunday morning amongst its hills and valleys.

=Bude= is a place beloved by many summer visitors, and the course is a good course if there are not too many of them upon it. The turf is of the seaside order, and there are many hills that must once have been sandhills, so that perhaps in some earlier geological epoch the course might have been more exciting than it is now. These hills are now, for the most part, covered with grass, but the sand appears quickly enough if a bunker has to be cut. There is one fact which is perhaps a little sad about Bude, and that is, that though there are the most magnificent waves to be seen there, the golf course is not the place to see them from, and we do not really catch sight of them till we come to the sixteenth hole, which a friend of mine has christened the 'Nursery Maid' hole. Here we have to play across a road that leads inland from the beach, and, as we are often finishing our round at precisely the same moment when the nurserymaids are conducting their young charges in for lunch, it becomes necessary to wait while an apparently endless procession wends its way homeward with much purposeless halting of children and screaming of maids.

Perhaps the best hole on the outward journey is the third, where there are really a variety of reasons why we should very likely play a bad second shot. In the first place, we shall not improbably have rather a hanging lie from which to play our pitch, and, to make things more difficult, the green is sloping away from us. Guarding the green is a fine natural bunker, where the punishment is apt to be very severe, and beyond it is a sandy road, so that altogether our pitch cannot possibly be called easy. We can so place our tee-shot as to modify its terrors, but we can by no means do away with them altogether.

After the agonies of the third there is a partial relapse into mildness, but there are good carries from the sixth and seventh tees; at the latter of the two over a big hill, the face of which has been cut out and converted into a bunker. The ninth too has a good tee-shot over another big bunker on to a green which is well protected on every side. At the tenth a punchbowl green brings hopes of a perhaps undeserved three, and then for a space we play in and out of some land that was once a garden or orchard: we can still see where the wall and the ditch used to run. We enter the garden by means of a good cleek shot over a big hill thickly covered with bents; leave it at the twelfth and re-enter it at the thirteenth, a hole not unlike the eleventh. At the fourteenth we may break the windows in a terrace of houses by a well executed slice; and at the sixteenth the aforesaid nurserymaids have to be circumvented. When we have paid for the windows and buried the nurserymaids, we play quite a short but deceptive iron shot to the seventeenth, avoiding a bunker and a sandy road, and so home with a good two-shot hole to end with.

We can go no further west than Cornwall, so let us turn back to =Burnham=, in Somersetshire. Whenever a golfing conversation turns upon blind holes, and one party boasts of the giant hills and deep valleys of any particular course, it is almost certain that another will say, "Ah, but you should just see Burnham in Somerset." Thus it happens that we go there for our first visit in the frame of mind of one who sets out for the Alps after having seen nothing perceptibly higher than Constitution Hill.

A first glance at the course assures us that we shall not be disappointed, for as we take our stand upon the tee we are ringed round with sandhills, and wherever the first hole may be, this much is evident, that we shall have to drive the ball over a mountain in order to get there. Hole succeeds hole, and still the endless range of hills goes on, and from the summit of each one we get the most lovely views: to the right a chain of hills, with the Cheddar Gorge in the distance; to the left the Bristol Channel, with the islands of Steep Home and Flat Home and an expanse of dim country on the other side. When we turn for home at the ninth, we still see the sandhills stretching tumultuously away towards Weston, with their strange fantastic shapes, and occasionally a narrow, meandering ribbon of turf in between. There seems to be material for at least one other course, and, indeed, the difficulty would appear to be not to find bunkers, but to find an open place where there are not too many of them.

With this wonderful stretch of country to work upon, it is small wonder that those who originally designed the course made a number of blind holes. They would have been hard put to it to do anything else, and there are, in fact, on the old course, if my reckoning be correct, no less than six blind one-shot holes, to say nothing of several longer holes, where the approach shot is played merely at a guide flag waving upon a hill top. I say the old course because, as I write, Burnham is in a transition stage, and what may be called the new course is practically in working order. Thus some of the blind short holes will disappear for ever, not, perhaps, without leaving a pang of regret behind them, and in their place come some flatter, and longer, and more open holes, which are not so characteristic of Burnham, but are none the worse for that. The hills will be all the more enjoyable when occasionally contrasted with the plains, and these new holes now give the course just that extra length that it needed.

Now let us play in imagination over the course in its altered condition, and tee up our ball for the first hole. There is a little dip between two grassy hills--a horribly narrow one it looks--and that is where we have to drive. A really fine shot may take us to the edge of the green, and we may go on our way rejoicing with a three, for the green is big and good. A drive and a pitch in the country of hills should suffice for the second, and then come two excellent holes, where we cease to drive over the hills, and are set the far severer task of hitting straight down the gully that lies between them.

"This reminds me very much of Wallasey," I remarked, not without hopes of having made an interesting and original comment, and my guide answered in a tone, in which courtesy struggled with weariness, that he had often heard the same comment made before. Of these two holes the fourth, which is 'dog-legged,' and gives a well-deserved advantage to the fearless hitter, is particularly good; and then there comes a most fascinating hole, the fifth. Two full shots are needed, over some very broken and billowy country, to reach a green that lies at the bottom of a deep hollow. This hollow has merits, which are not given to all of its kind, for its sides are abruptly precipitous and not possessed of those gentle and flattering slopes, which coax the indifferently struck ball in the direction of the hole. The sixth, on the other hand, which is a one-shot hole, has all the vices which the fifth avoids, for here all roads lead to the flag, and the perfect shot, the paltry slice, and the too vigorous hook, may all meet together at such a range from the hole that a two is by no means improbable.

After being unduly pampered by this sixth hole, we are brought face to face with the sterner realities of life, and must be prepared to play a series of long and accurate brassey shots if we are to do anything better than five for each of the next three holes. Of these three the eighth and ninth are new, and the only thing to be said against them is that there is such a family likeness between them that it is a pity they come immediately together. Nothing but long, straight hitting will do here along a narrow tongue of grass that is flanked on either side by sand and bents.

The tenth deserves a special word, if only for the fact that a huge sandhill has had its head cut off--this is regarded as quite a minor operation at Burnham--in order that we may see the flag from the tee. There it is, a terribly long way off, as it seems, but one really good shot should reach the green, avoiding some little nests of pot-bunkers on the way, and there is a three to reduce the average of fives for the homeward journey. Another three should come at the twelfth, when only a short pitch is needed, but eleven and thirteen are very likely to be fives; long, narrow, flat holes, with broken ground and little clumps of rushes that are intensely business-like. The fourteenth is, I think, almost the best hole on the course, and certainly the tee-shot is the most alarming. We can see all our troubles only too clearly here--a sandy road full of the deepest ruts on the right, called in spirit of ostentatious levity the 'Old Kent Road,' and on the left a prickly and seductive hedge. If only there was a mountain in the way at this hole, we should probably come less frequently to grief. As it is, we concentrate all our attention on being straight, and are all the more terribly crooked in consequence.

The next two holes both need accurate approach shots, and then comes the last and best of the blind holes, 'Majuba.' There is a steep hill of a rather curious conical shape to drive over, but the chief of the dangers lie on the far side, where the green lies in a narrow little gorge between a bunker on the right, and on the left a hill thickly covered with bents. This is as good a blind short hole as one could possibly wish for, and makes a sufficiently critical and exciting seventeenth, while the new eighteenth should be one of the best last holes to be seen anywhere. Two raking shots will be wanted, and the second of them, if it go as straight as an arrow between two flanking bunkers, will be rewarded by as good a piece of turf as the heart of the putter can desire.

Still travelling back in an easterly direction, we come to Broadstone, in Dorsetshire, not far from Bournemouth. =Broadstone= is, I think, rather an easy course to remember, which is the same as saying that the holes have each got very definite characters of their own; at any rate, although I have seen them but once, I can play them all quite clearly in my mind's eye, save only the park holes, which, truth to tell, are not much worth remembering. These park holes are certainly one of the drawbacks to the course. For six holes we are playing excellent golf in the right golfing country, with heather, and sand, and everything as it should be. Then we go through a wicket gate, the whole scene instantly changes, and, behold! we are playing a hole of the typical inland kind. There is no heather and no sand, save such as has been transplanted to fill up a number of conscientious little bunkers, and it is no great injustice to liken the turf to that of a good smooth field. For six holes we are playing in the park, and then the tyranny is overpast, and we emerge once more upon the heather for the rest of the round. In fact, the course is divided into three slices of six holes each, the first and last slice being good, and the middle slice being of very ordinary stuff indeed.

It is a little hard to understand why these park holes were ever made, because there is a glorious and apparently illimitable tract of heather waiting to be played over, only divided from the course by the railway. I believe there is a scheme afoot to make some further holes upon this heather, that is now so lamentably wasting its sweetness, and if this is done, Broadstone should be able to hold its head very high among inland courses.

In point of mere looks, it is very hard to beat now, and especially is there a most lovely view, with Poole Harbour in the distance, from the fifteenth hole, which is on the highest part of the course. This hole has likewise a unique feature in the shape of a genuine Roman tumulus, which at first sight the stranger is apt to attribute to the genius of Mr. Herbert Fowler, or some other maker of hazards. It stands almost exactly in the middle of the fairway, and those who drive too straight must deal with the situation as best they can with their niblicks.

A vast deal of trouble and money must have been spent on the putting greens, which are very smooth and good, and enormously big. They are, in fact, too big, and a revolutionary leader who should dig bunkers in the edge of them would be doing the course a service. I cannot help thinking, also, that rather too many of them are upon plateaus--not the plateaus of St. Andrews, but the plateau that is cut out of the side of a slope and has a back wall to cover a multitude of approaching sins. The bunkering is something of a patchwork, in which the theories of two opposite schools have been blended. We see, first of all, the remains of an older civilization in the shape of deep sandy trenches, with the accompanying ramparts dug right across the course. Then, as golfing opinion has progressed, or at any rate altered, there have been added, under Mr. Fowler's guidance, a good number of pot-bunkers, which seem to have some of the qualities of those we know and fear at Walton Heath, being easy to get into and hard to get out of. Besides these, the heather is always there to trap us at the sides of the course; there are also trees in places, and likewise whins, while one of the park holes so far demeans itself as to be guarded by an ordinary hedge.

The course begins very well with a fine, long, two-shot hole, a little 'dog-legged,' where the second shot will just creep on to the green between two sentinel bunkers. The second is another fine one, save that the plateau green has a terribly steep bank; and the third is wholly admirable, with its cheerful tee-shot from a height, followed by an iron shot down the middle of an avenue of trees. The fourth I believe to be likewise an excellent hole, but my attention was distracted from the hole by the scene I witnessed on the tee. There was an irascible gentleman and a small caddie; the caddie had made an inefficient tee, and the irascible gentleman was the possessor of a prolonged and solemn waggle. The waggle began and the ball fell off; the irascible gentleman made opprobrious remarks, and put it on the tee again, while the small caddie showed a dreadful tendency to laugh, which he restrained with obvious difficulty. This happened really innumerable times, till both the gentleman and the small boy appeared certain, from different causes, to die of apoplexy, and, indeed, I had serious fears for myself. The ball was ultimately despatched into a neighbouring ditch, and I passed on without having disgraced myself, but remembering very little about the hole. Both the fifth and sixth are short holes, though the sixth needs a long, straight shot, and then we pass into the park, or better still, by a short cut along the high road, which brings us back to the heathery country and the thirteenth hole--a good short hole, where a wood to the right of the green has doubtless slain its tens of thousands.

At the fourteenth we need a long, straight drive, followed by an iron shot that must be played firmly and boldly home on to a plateau guarded in front by a steep and unclimbable bank, and to the right by a pit of destruction, where the horrors of sand and whins are intermingled. Of the remaining holes, the seventeenth and eighteenth are both good, especially the former, which, with its tee-shot among the whins, has an air of Huntercombe about it. The sixteenth, however, does not seem at all worthy of its fellows, being, as it appeared to me, as essentially vicious as a hole can be. The ball is struck--with a measure of straightness, I admit--to the brow of a hill, then the hill does the rest. The ball hops, and skips, and jumps down the slope till it reaches a green built out from the hillside, and, lest it should jump too far and run over, there is a back wall of wire-netting. This is the kind of hole--I can think of nothing worse to say of it--that some people call 'sporting.'

Having given relief to my pent-up feelings on the subject of that sixteenth hole, I feel entirely at peace with Broadstone, which has some really fine holes, and is as pleasant a spot to play golf in--as breezy, and pretty, and quiet--as anyone could desire.

Besides Broadstone and the new course at Parkstone, which can be reached by a very short train journey, Bournemouth has two courses of its very own, Meyrick Park and Queen's Park. Both are situated in very pretty spots, amid the fir trees that are always with us at Bournemouth. =Meyrick Park= is rather a miniature affair, although it is not so short as when Tom Dunn originally laid it out. Then there was one green that could be reached with a shortish putt from the tee, and the most decrepit might hope for a round under eighty. There are still many threes for the accurate iron player, but there are also one or two good long holes, particularly the ninth, where we play, as it were, into the narrow neck of a bottle among the pine-woods. It is not unamusing, but the serious golfer will rather betake himself to the newer course at the Boscombe end of the world, =Queen's Park=. Both these courses belong to the Corporation, and all we have to do is to pay our shilling and play our round. We get plenty for our money at Queen's Park, for the course is over 6000 yards in length, which is certainly not too short for the wants of old gentlemen who totter round it.

It is really good golfing country, with big, rolling undulations and plenty of heather and sand. There are long, narrow gullies running in between the hills, rather reminiscent of another very pretty course, Hindhead. For the most part, however, we are not playing along the gullies, which would have tested our accuracy to the full, but rather go leaping from one hillside to the other; in fact, if we are virtuous we are always on a hill, and the valleys represent the infernal regions--it is only the wicked who go down into them. This is just a little monotonous, and we might rashly call it a fault in architecture. There is, however, a reason for it, in that all the best soil is to be found in the highlands, while the low-lying ground is in that respect unsatisfactory.

The course is still comparatively young, and has not yet put forth any very thick crop of bunkers; but the heather is wiry and tenacious and the fairway narrow. There are two consecutive holes of a most paralyzing narrowness--the seventh and eighth--where the ball has to be steered between a fir wood on the right and a high road, which is out of bounds, on the left. The third hole, again, is a fine two-shot hole, and there are plenty more. They are perhaps rather too similar in character owing to the recurring valleys, but they one and all need good play.

Even among the heathery courses, which are nearly all good to look upon, Queen's Park takes a very high place for beauty, and it is a joy to find anything so pretty and peaceful on the very edge of a big town. Every prospect pleases, and only the old colonel, who is in front of us and plays fifteen more with his niblick, is entirely vile.

The reader must now make in imagination the short and generally innocuous crossing to the Isle of Wight, in order to see one of the most charming of nine-hole courses at =Bembridge=. The Royal Isle of Wight Golf Club can boast of a comparatively hoary antiquity, since it was founded in 1882, and Bembridge was perhaps rather more famous when there were fewer links in existence. It is still, however, very good golf, and has many faithful and affectionate friends. The nine holes dodge in and out after the manner of a cat's cradle, so that Bembridge has earned a reputation for being one of the most dangerous courses in the world, and it used to be said that all the local players expected to be hit once at least in the course of a year. To cry a brisk 'fore' is to absolve oneself from responsibility, and one may then let fly at any impeding player with a clear conscience. There is one particularly perilous spot, where the ball is apt to lie after a straight drive of moderate length on the way to the first hole. Here the player is in the midst of a veritable ring of death, since a hot fire may be opened upon him simultaneously from the seventh, eighth, and ninth tees, to say nothing of the first tee to his immediate rear. It is perhaps owing to this exciting characteristic of the course that that pleasant anachronism, the red coat, is still occasionally to be seen at Bembridge.

The course lies upon a spur of land between Bembridge harbour and the Solent, and one is rowed over to it from the hotel in a boat. Small things remain absurdly graven on the memory, and I remember nothing at Bembridge more clearly than the nautical gentleman who used to row us over a great many years ago, and his expression when Mr. John Low genially hailed him as "You licensed brigand." Once the stranger arrives on the course he will be struck, possibly by a ball, and certainly by the ubiquitous character of a road which winds about the course like a snake, and is an almost ever-present menace throughout the round; indeed, it has some say in the matter at every one of the holes, save only the third and the fifth. Some of its glory--or its horror, according to the light in which we view the matter--has, however, departed, for whereas it was once uniformly sandy and soft and full of the direst ruts, it is now metalled in many places, and so is naturally much less terrible. Another feature of the course, which is now less pronounced than it used to be, is the luxuriant growth of whins. These have become sadly thinner, and one who knows and loves his Bembridge well tells me that this is in a measure due to the havoc wrought among them in the early days of the rubber-cored ball, when a Haskell was infinitely precious and was not to be given up for lost till the entire neighbourhood had been laid waste with the niblick.

The first hole is one of the best on the course, requiring a drive, followed by an accurate cleek-shot on a still day, and against the wind two really fine shots. The whins lie in wait for a sliced shot, while on the left is the strong shore of the harbour. There is a delightful account of a round at Bembridge, written years ago by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, in which the writer pulls his shot at this hole on to the beach, and ultimately finds his ball lying upon a 'dead and derelict dog'--a grisly and, I trust, an unusual hazard. The next two holes are of very similar length, and can both be reached with a drive and a pitching shot; there are whins and a big bunker to trap the erring tee-shot, and in both cases the approach has to be played on to a green which is difficult to the verge of trickiness.

The fourth is a really good hole, some 460 yards in length, and has a thoroughly difficult tee-shot, since the most contemptible of golfing vices will be punished by a large bunker, while the more manly but still reprehensible pull lands the ball in a grassy pit. The fifth is a short hole, gifted with no particular merit and a number of whin bushes, but at the sixth we come to a hole which can hold its own in the very best of company. It has the virtue of presenting to the player the choice of two alternative routes, so that, according as he is long or short, courageous or cautious, he can vary the length of the hole for himself. If he is a strong and ambitious hitter, he will go straight for the second green, carrying the road on the way; the situation is the more poignant because the road is here not metalled, and failure must entail a measure of disaster. On the other hand, if the road be safely carried, he is left with a comparatively short and straightforward second shot, though he has still to cross a bunker of magnificent proportions that guards the green. The more careful, on the other hand, push their tee-shot to a spot further out to the right and short of the road, whence it is still possible to get home, but only by means of a shot that is both longer and harder. There are, I believe, many persons of sound judgment who think that the playing of the tee-shot on to the second green should be prohibited by law, both because all unnecessary risks of doing murder are undesirable and also on the ground that the second stroke by the right-hand line is more difficult and more interesting. Two holes of the drive and pitch type follow; indeed, a strong hitter may hope, under very favourable conditions, to get home with his tee-shot; but at the eighth in particular the drive must be a very straight one, for there are whins to right and left, and our old enemy the road lurks at the edge of the green. Finally, the green is a very tricky one, and altogether discretion at this hole lives fully up to its proverbial characteristics.

At the last hole, which calls for a drive and a good full iron-shot, a four is never to be despised, and with that we start off once more between the whins and the beach, and pass pale and trembling again through the fiery zone. The golf at Bembridge is most certainly attractive, and that it has other and more sterling qualities is shown by the fine players it has produced, the two Toogoods and Rowland Jones amongst them. "By their fruits ye shall know them" is true of golf links as well as of other things.