CHAPTER VIII.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are rich in many things, but are very decidedly poor in the matter of golf courses. I should be more precise if I said poor in their own courses, for in Frilford Heath and Worlington (or as it is often called, Mildenhall) they are lucky to possess hospitable neighbours, who provide them with very delightful golf indeed.

The courses of Cambridge I know very well indeed, having played over them at intervals during the greater part of my life. With those of Oxford I have only, comparatively speaking, a bowing acquaintance, founded on the annual match between the University and the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society. Before turning to Frilford there is a word to be said of Cowley, Radley, and Hinksey, the latter of which has now ceased to exist. Cowley, so I have heard my friend Mr. Croome declare, is now rather a good course, and as I have never seen it, I most certainly will not venture to contradict him; but I can take my oath as to both Hinksey and Radley that they call for some other epithet. =Hinksey= was certainly amusing, and I have spent some not wholly unpleasant afternoons there squelching through the mud and trying vainly to hole putts by cannoning off alternate wormcasts. There was a short hole--the fourth, I think--where one played a pitching shot into the heart of a wood which was distinctly entertaining, but on the whole it was not a good test of golf, or, if it was, then I would rather have my golf tested in some other way.

When Hinksey ceased to exist =Radley= came into being, and it is most decidedly a longer and more difficult course, but I am not certain that it is such good fun. It is a good deal longer; indeed a great many of the holes are of a very good length. There is a really good seventeenth, where one skirts a wood on the right, and granted a good lie--a thing which rests upon the knees of the gods--one may hit two really fine shots and get a fine four. I imagine, however, that no one will be prepared to deny that it is muddy--I will go so far as to say extremely muddy--and in these days we are so pampered with beautiful sandy inland courses that we no longer suffer mud at all gladly. So if we are at Oxford I think we had better throw economy to the winds and charter a 'taxi,' which shall take us up Cumnor Hill to Frilford Heath.

=Frilford= is only seven miles from Oxford, but it might be a hundred miles from anywhere. It lies on a little unfrequented by-road, and is as utterly rural and peaceful a spot as could be found anywhere. Here is sand enough and to spare--a wonderful oasis in the desert of mud. The sand is so near the turf that out of pure exuberance it breaks out here and there in little eruptions on the surface or flies up in a miniature sand-storm as the ball alights. The ground is for the most part very flat, and there are fir trees and whins scattered here and there. There is also a pretty wood of firs and birches, over which we have to drive at the third hole, of which more anon. The greens are a little rough as yet, and some of the bunkers have still to be made, or at least had not been made when I last played there; but time alone is wanted to make Frilford a very fine course indeed. It is already a wonderfully charming one.

The first two holes remind one a little of Muirfield, since there is a stone wall over which a pulled ball will inevitably vanish. The second is a fine long two-shot hole, and at the first, which is somewhat shorter, a highly ingenious use has been made of a solitary tree, which forces the player to drive close to the stone wall if he is to have an open approach. Then comes the third before mentioned, which is a one-shot hole. The wood rises pretty steeply in front of the tee, and the shot is made the more difficult because a cleek is hardly long enough, and so we have to take a wooden club. Many a shot that would under ordinary circumstances fill us with a mild degree of conceit will only send the ball crashing into the forest. It is no hole for the 'low raker' which we regard with complacency at Hoylake and St. Andrews. We must hit a fine high towering shot, and then we may hope to find our ball on the green--a pretty little green which nestles close under the lee of the wood on the far side. After this come some long open holes in a country of scattered whin bushes. Exactly how long they are I am not prepared to say. I played them in the company of Mr. A. J. Evans, and he appeared to regard them justifiably enough as two-shot holes, but personally I found myself taking by no means the most lofted of my iron clubs for my third shot. There is a pretty little pitching hole over a stone wall--the seventh--which has a flavour of Harlech about it; and the ninth, which brings us close to the club-house again, is surely one of the most alarming holes in existence. The drive is simple enough, but my goodness, what a second! In front of the green is a mountain, and on either side of the green are deep pits, towards which the ground 'draws' most unmistakably. Then the green itself is quite small, and has in its centre a copy of the aforesaid mountain in miniature. The approach shot, moreover, is by no means a short one, but is for the ordinary driver a good firm iron shot, so that a four is really an epoch-making score for the hole.

After the turn it seems to me that the golf shows a distinct falling off. The holes are still long enough and difficult enough, and Mr. Evans still seemed to require one stroke less to reach the green than I did, but for the most part they lack the indefinable charm of the first nine. There is, however, certainly one exception to this general criticism, and that is the really fascinating seventeenth, which is emphatically the right hole in the right place. There is a wood and a stone wall to carry, and the angle at which we play is such that there is a very real reward for the long ball which is judiciously hooked. A good as opposed to an ordinary drive may make all the difference between a four and a five, for the green is full of undulations, and the nearer we are to it when we take our iron in hand the better. Taking it altogether the golf is both good and difficult, and besides that Frilford is essentially one of those places where it is good to be alive with a golf club in one's hand--even if one uses it indifferently--and whither one looks forward to returning with a very keen enjoyment.

The undergraduates of Cambridge, when they have not the time to go to Worlington, now play golf at Coton, a pleasant little village enough that lies off the Madingley Road. I must spare a word or two, however, for the old course at =Coldham Common=, because I am quite sure that it was the worst course I have ever seen, and many others would probably award it a like distinction. The way to Coldham was suggestive of the pleasures that awaited one there, for it led down that most depressing of Cambridge streets, the Newmarket Road, and through the most unattractive slums of Barnwell. After voyaging for some distance along the Newmarket Road, one turned down a particularly black and odorous lane, crossed a railway bridge, and reached a flat, muddy expanse of grass, of which the only features were a railway line and some rifle butts. I should also perhaps include among its features a particularly pungent smell, which we always believed--I know not with how much truth--to proceed from the boiling down of deceased horses into glue.

On arriving outside the precincts of the club-house one was at once surrounded and nearly swept from one's legs by a yelling mob of caddies of most villainous appearance, who were supposed, quite erroneously, to be under the control of a well-meaning but deservedly superannuated policeman. Anyone who played there regularly soon found himself made over, body and soul, to one of these ruffians, and then exchanged the solicitations of the general mob for the unceasing importunities of his own particular henchman in the matter of cast-off clothing.

In addition to the regular corps of caddies there was an irregular body of younger depredators who had no official position, and earned a precarious livelihood by stealing or retrieving balls. They enjoyed considerable opportunities, because there were on the Common a good many muddy ditches--the only natural hazards--and along the edges of these ditches the youth of Barnwell took up strategic positions at stated intervals. Sometimes considerations of policy dictated that they should retrieve the errant ball, and return it to its owner for a penny. Sometimes they would dexterously stamp the ball into the mud, pretend to hunt for it with a great show of energy, and pocket it at their leisure when the owner had abandoned the search. This was an easy matter enough, for the mud was of the softest and thickest, and the ball would frequently bury itself on alighting without any help from the human foot. How our visitors from Blackheath and Yarmouth could bear it I now find a difficulty in understanding, and it says much for their enthusiasm and friendliness that they came to play against us year after year. They put up with it manfully, and very jolly matches we used to have. Indeed, to quote J. K. S., "the smile on my face is a mask for tears," and I could almost wish to strike another ball at Coldham. I must admit to having enjoyed myself very much there, almost as much as on another course of woeful greens and superlative muddiness--the old Athens course at Eton.

Coton I do not know well, but though an enthusiastic captain of Cambridge once told me that the greens were as good as the best seaside ones, I am disposed to think he was romancing. There is another flourishing course on the Gog-Magog hills, where there is at least a charming view, and twelve or thirteen miles away is Royston. Here there is a truly splendid view over miles and miles of the flat country, for the course lies on a piece of breezy downland perched high above its surroundings. A very jolly place it is whereon to play golf, though the golf perhaps is not of the highest class. It is a course of steep hills and deep gullies, and there is much climbing to be done and much putting on perplexing slopes. Some of these gullies form wonderful natural amphitheatres, and I always like to think that in one of them was fought the battle for the championship of England between Peter Crawley, the 'Young Rump Steak,' and Jem Ward, 'the Black Diamond.' That the fight took place on Royston Heath we know from _Boxiana_, but the exact battlefield has become obscured by the mists of time.

Better than all these courses, however, is =Worlington=, the home of the Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club, who kindly allow the University to use their course and play their matches there. To get from Cambridge to Worlington is rather a serious undertaking, for although the station, Mildenhall, is but a little over twenty miles away, the progress made by the infrequent trains is of the most leisurely. Still, we do get there in time, passing poor deserted Coldham Common on the way, and the golf is good enough to repay us for all our trouble. Worlington is not unlike Frilford in appearance, being extremely solitary, flat, and sandy, and dotted here and there with fir trees. There are only nine holes, but of these several are really excellent, and none can fairly be said to be dull. One curious feature of the course is that one may play a round there which shall be made up almost entirely of fives and threes. This was conspicuously the case in the days of the gutty ball, for there were four holes that could be reached from the tee, although the second hole certainly required a very long shot, and five which were beyond the range of two full shots, save for colossal drivers. Whoever laid out the course clearly had no great opinion of Mr. Hutchinson's doctrine as to the length of a hole being some multiple of a full drive, and had no objection to two drives and a pitch. Nowadays with the rubber ball some of the old-time fives have become fours, but they are difficult fours requiring in one or two cases fine long-carrying second shots, and fives are still likely to preponderate.

Of all the courses that I know well, none shows so well as Worlington the difference between the solid and the elastic ball, and a particular instance, which is historic in a very small way, may be given. The third hole is an extraordinarily good one, wherein the green lies just beyond a marshy ditch and is also well protected by pot-bunkers. After the tee-shot, one has to carry ditch, bunkers and all, but a weak drive necessitates playing short, and the shot is an extremely difficult one, because the ball has to be placed on a narrow neck of grass which slopes down on either side to a ditch and other horrors. Just before I went up to Cambridge there had been a great foursome between Douglas Rolland, Willy Park, Hugh Kirkaldy, and Jack White, who was then the professional at Worlington; and a certain shot of Rolland's was spoken of with bated breath as being something altogether superhuman. With a fair breeze against him, he had actually reached the third green with his second shot. The hole is still the same length: the tee is back as far as it will possibly go, and yet one can as a rule get home with an iron club of no inordinate power, while it takes a very strong wind indeed to make it necessary to play short. This third is a wonderfully good hole still, but it was more heroic in the old days.

A hole that does to-day require two heroic shots is the sixth; indeed the green can only be reached in two with a favouring wind. Along the whole length of the hole, on the right-hand side, runs a belt of fir trees, while in front of the green is a ditch. If one clings very closely to the firs with the tee-shot, and then plays a big, high-carrying brassey shot, one may hope to see the ball just clear the last fir tree and drop down close to the hole. Another hole that nobody is ever likely to forget is the fifth. One may reach the green with a pitch from the tee, but what a difficult pitch it is. The green is something in the shape of a hog's back; immediately on the left of it is a stagnant pool of water, and on the right is a stream, complicated by overhanging willows. To reach the green is one distinct feat; to hole out in two putts, when one has got there, is another. For the most part the whole course is delightfully dry and sandy, in spite of the presence of many ditches, and the greens, when they are good, are very good, though they have sometimes a tendency towards getting a little bare and tricky.

It is no small thing for the Cambridge teams to have this admirable practising ground, and this alone should make for an improvement in Cambridge golf. University golf, however, has naturally improved a good deal in the last few years. Twelve years ago a freshman who should come up to either University and show himself to be already a good or even a goodish golfer was something of a phenomena. Nowadays thousands of school boys play golf, and consequently there is nearly always a supply of freshmen who can play a good game when they first come up. In the last century--to use a formidable expression--there was usually a considerable gap between the first two or three men and the last. In the very earliest days Oxford had two very fine players in Mr. Horace Hutchinson and Mr. Alexander Stuart, while Cambridge had Mr. Welsh, now a tutor at Jesus, and the possessor of a monumental reputation at Machrihanish. The other members of the side were generally of a very different calibre, and some of them would be badly off nowadays with any handicap under eighteen. Later on in the early nineties Cambridge had some fine sides, with Mr. Low, Mr. Colt, Mr. Eric Hambro, and other good players, and to this day probably the best University side that ever played was the much quoted Oxford side of 1900, of which Mr. Mansfield Hunter was the captain.

On the whole, however, the general standard of play is higher to-day, and personally I was enormously struck with the golf in the match at Hoylake in 1910. For one thing, the driving was wonderfully steady and good, and some of it very long, and all the play was well worth the watching, which is more than could have been said for some of it not so very, very long ago.