I do not recall a feeling of greater triumph than on last Saturday when I walked off the eighteenth green of the Country Club with my opponent four down. I have the card before me now with its pleasant row of fives and sixes, and a four,
and a three. Usually my card has mounted here and there to an eight or nine, or I have blown up altogether in a sandpit. Like Byron--but, oh, how differently!--I have wandered in the pathless wood. Like Ruth I have stood in tears amid the alien corn.
In those old days--only a week ago, but dim already (so soon does time wash the memory white)--in those old days, if I were asked to make up a foursome, some green inferior fellow, a novice who used his sister's clubs, was paired against me; or I was insulted with two strokes a hole, with three on the long hole past the woods. But now I shall ascend to faster company. It was my elbow. I now square it and cock it forward a bit. And I am cured. Keep your head down, Fritzie Boy, I say. Mind your elbow--I say it aloud--and I have no trouble.
There is a creek across the course. Like a thread in the woof it cuts the web of nearly every green. It is a black strand that puts trouble in the pattern, an evil thread from Clotho's ancient loom. Up at the sixth hole this creek is merely a dirty rivulet and I can get out of the damned thing--one must write, they say, as one talks and not go on stilts--I can get out with a niblick by splashing myself a bit. But even here, in its tender youth, as it were, the rivulet makes all the mischief that it can. Gargantua with his nurses was not so great a rogue. It crawls back and forth three times before the tee with a kind of jeering tongue stuck out. It seems foredoomed from the cradle to a villainous course. Farther down, at the seventeenth and second holes, which are near together, it cuts a deeper chasm. The bank is shale and steep. As I drive I feel like a black sinner on the nearer shore of Styx, gazing upon the sunny fields of Paradise beyond. I put my caddy at the top of the slope, where he sits with his apathetic eye upon the sullen, predestined pool.
But since last Saturday all is different. I sailed across on every drive, on every approach. The depths beckoned but I heeded not. And, when I walked across the bridge, I snapped my fingers in contempt, as at a dog that snarls safely on a leash.
I play best with a niblick. It is not entirely that I use it most. (Any day you can hear me bawling to my caddy to fetch it behind a bunker or beyond a fence.) Rather, the surface of the blade turns up at a reassuring, hopeful angle. Its shining eye seems cast at heaven in a prayer. I have had spells, also, of fondness for my mashie. It is fluted for a back-spin. Except for the click and flight of a prosperous drive I know nothing of prettier symmetry than an accurate approach. But my brassie I consider a reckless creature. It has bad direction. It treads not in the narrow path. I have driven. Good! For once I am clear of the woods. That white speck on the fairway is my ball. But shall my ambition o'erleap itself? Shall I select my brassie and tempt twice the gods of chance? No! I'll use my mashie. I'll creep up to the hole on hands and knees and be safe from trap and ditch.
Has anyone spent more time than I among the blackberry bushes along the railroad tracks on the eleventh? It is no grossness of appetite. My niblick grows hot with its exertions.
Once our course was not beset with sandpits. In those bright days woods and gulley were enough. Once clear of the initial obstruction I could roll up unimpeded to the green. I practiced a bouncing stroke with my putter that offered security at twenty yards. But now these approaches are guarded by traps. The greens are balanced on little mountains with sharp ditches all about. I hoist up from one to fall into another. "What a word, my son, has passed the barrier of your teeth!" said Athene once to Odysseus. Is the game so ancient? Were there sandpits, also, on the hills of stony Ithaca? Or in Ortygia, sea-girt? Was the dear wanderer off his game and fallen to profanity? The white-armed nymph Calypso must have stuffed her ears.
But now my troubles are behind me. I have cured my elbow of its fault. I keep my head down. My very clubs have taken on a different look since Saturday. I used to remark their nicks against the stones. A bit of green upon the heel of my driver showed how it was that I went sidewise to the woods. In those days I carried the bag spitefully to the shower. Could I leave it, I pondered, as a foundling in an empty locker? Or should I strangle it? But now all is changed. My clubs are servants to my will, kindly, obedient creatures that wait upon my nod. Even my brassie knows me for its master. And the country seems fairer. The valleys smile at me. The creek is friendly to my drive. The tall hills skip and clap their hands at my approach. My game needs only thought and care. My fives will become fours, my sixes slip down to fives. And here and there I shall have a three.
Except for a row of books my mantelpiece is bare. Who knows? Some day I may sweep off a musty row of history and set up a silver cup.
Later--Saturday again. I have just been around in 123. Horrible! I was in the woods and in the blackberry bushes, and in the creek seven times. My envious brassie! My well-belovèd mashie! Oh, vile conspiracy! Ambition's debt is paid. 123! Now--now it's my shoulder.
[The end]
Charles S. Brooks's essay: Sic Transit--