The Clicking of Cuthbert

fourth time he topped badly. The discs had been set back a little way,

and James had the mournful distinction of breaking a record for the

course by playing his fifth shot from the tee. It was a low, raking

brassey-shot, which carried a heap of stones twenty feet to the right

and finished in a furrow. Peter, meanwhile, had popped up a lofty ball

which came to rest behind a stone.

It was now that the rigid rules governing this contest began to take

their toll. Had they been playing an ordinary friendly round, each

would have teed up on some convenient hillock and probably been past

the tree with their second, for James would, in ordinary circumstances,

have taken his drive back and regarded the strokes he had made as a

little preliminary practice to get him into midseason form. But today

it was war to the niblick, and neither man asked nor expected quarter.

Peter's seventh shot dislodged the stone, leaving him a clear field,

and James, with his eleventh, extricated himself from the furrow. Fifty

feet from the tree James was eighteen, Peter twelve; but then the

latter, as every golfer does at times, suddenly went right off his

game. He hit the tree four times, then hooked into the sand-bunkers to

the left of the hole. James, who had been playing a game that was

steady without being brilliant, was on the green in twenty-six, Peter

taking twenty-seven. Poor putting lost James the hole. Peter was down

in thirty-three, but the pace was too hot for James. He missed a

two-foot putt for the half, and they went to the fourth tee all square.

The fourth hole follows the curve of the road, on the other side of

which are picturesque woods. It presents no difficulties to the expert,

but it has pitfalls for the novice. The dashing player stands for a

slice, while the more cautious are satisfied if they can clear the

bunker that spans the fairway and lay their ball well out to the left,

whence an iron shot will take them to the green. Peter and James

combined the two policies. Peter aimed to the left and got a slice, and

James, also aiming to the left, topped into the bunker. Peter,

realizing from experience the futility of searching for his ball in the

woods, drove a second, which also disappeared into the jungle, as did

his third. By the time he had joined James in the bunker he had played

his sixth.

It is the glorious uncertainty of golf that makes it the game it is.

The fact that James and Peter, lying side by side in the same bunker,

had played respectively one and six shots, might have induced an

unthinking observer to fancy the chances of the former. And no doubt,

had he not taken seven strokes to extricate himself from the pit, while

his opponent, by some act of God, contrived to get out in two, James's

chances might have been extremely rosy. As it was, the two men

staggered out on to the fairway again with a score of eight apiece.

Once past the bunker and round the bend of the road, the hole becomes

simple. A judicious use of the cleek put Peter on the green in

fourteen, while James, with a Braid iron, reached it in twelve. Peter

was down in seventeen, and James contrived to halve. It was only as he

was leaving the hole that the latter discovered that he had been

putting with his niblick, which cannot have failed to exercise a

prejudicial effect on his game. These little incidents are bound to

happen when one is in a nervous and highly-strung condition.

The fifth and sixth holes produced no unusual features. Peter won the

fifth in eleven, and James the sixth in ten. The short seventh they

halved in nine. The eighth, always a tricky hole, they took no

liberties with, James, sinking a long putt with his twenty-third, just

managing to halve. A ding-dong race up the hill for the ninth found

James first at the pin, and they finished the first nine with James one

up.

As they left the green James looked a little furtively at his

companion.

"You might be strolling on to the tenth," he said. "I want to get a few

balls at the shop. And my mashie wants fixing up. I sha'n't be long."

"I'll come with you," said Peter.

"Don't bother," said James. "You go on and hold our place at the tee."

I regret to say that James was lying. His mashie was in excellent

repair, and he still had a dozen balls in his bag, it being his prudent

practice always to start out with eighteen. No! What he had said was

mere subterfuge. He wanted to go to his locker and snatch a few minutes

with Sandy MacBean's "How to Become a Scratch Man". He felt sure that

one more glance at the photograph of Mr. MacBean driving would give him

the mastery of the stroke and so enable him to win the match. In this I

think he was a little sanguine. The difficulty about Sandy MacBean's

method of tuition was that he laid great stress on the fact that the

ball should be directly in a line with a point exactly in the centre of

the back of the player's neck; and so far James's efforts to keep his

eye on the ball and on the back of his neck simultaneously had produced

no satisfactory results.

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