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Fifty Years of Golf By: Horace G. (Horace Gordon) Hutchinson (1859-1932) |
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[Illustration] First Published in 1919 [Illustration: The writer, the first English Captain of the Royal and
Ancient, buying back, according to custom, the ball struck off to win
the Captaincy.]
FIFTY YEARS OF GOLF By
HORACE G. HUTCHINSON LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF COUNTRY LIFE,
20 TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2 AND BY
GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8 11 SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
STRAND W.C.2. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PREFACE ( Written in 1914 )
I agreed to the suggestion that I should write these reminiscences,
mainly because it seems to me that circumstances have thrown my life
along such lines that I really have been more than any other man at the
centre of the growth of golf a growth out of nothingness in England,
and of relative littleness in Scotland, fifty years ago, to its present
condition of a fact of real national importance. I saw all the
beginnings, at Westward Ho! of the new life of English golf. I followed
its movement at Hoylake and later at Sandwich. I was on the Committee
initiating the Amateur Championship, the International Match, the Rules
of Golf Committee and so on. I have been Captain in succession of the
Royal North Devon, Royal Liverpool, Royal St. George's and Royal and
Ancient Clubs, as well as many others, and in these offices have been
not only able but even obliged to follow closely every step in the
popular advancement of the game. I do not mention these honours
vaingloriously, but only by way of showing that no one else perhaps has
had quite the same opportunities. Possibly I should explain, too, the apparent magniloquence of the phrase
describing golf as a "fact of real national importance." I do not think
it is an over statement. I use it irrespective of the intrinsic merits
of the game, as such. When we consider the amount of healthy exercise
that it gives to all ages and sexes, the amount of money annually
expended on it, the area of land (in many places otherwise valueless)
that is devoted to it, the accession in house and land values for which
it is responsible, the miles of railway and motor travel of which it is
the reason, the extent of house building of which it has been the cause,
and the amount of employment which it affords when these and other
incidental features are totalled up, it will be found, I think, that
there is no extravagance at all in speaking of the golf of the present
day as an item of national importance. At least, if golf be not so, it
is difficult to know what is. It is because I have in my head the material for the telling of the
history of this rise of golf to its present status that I have ventured
to write these personal reminiscences, and underlying them all has been
the sense that I was telling the story of the coming of golf, as well as
narrating tales of the great matches and the humorous incidents that I
have seen and taken part in by the way.
POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE ( Written in 1919 )
Reading the above "foreword," and also the pages which follow it, after
the immense chasm cleft in our lives and habits by the War, I find
little to modify as a result of the delay in publication. What does
strike me with something very like a thrill of terror is the appalling
egotism of the whole. I can truly say that I feel guiltily aware and
ashamed of it. I cannot, however, say that I see my way clear to amend
it. If one is rash enough to engage in the gentle pastime of personal
reminiscence at all, it is difficult to play it without using the
capital "I" for almost every tee shot. I will ask pardon for my
presumption in plucking a passage from one of the world's great
classics, to adorn so slight a theme as this, and will conclude in the
words of Michael, Lord of Montaigne: "Thus, gentle Reader, myselfe am
the groundworke of my booke: it is then no reason thou shouldst employe
thy time about so frivolous and vaine a subject."[1] CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE I THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS 11 II HOW GOLF IN ENGLAND GREW 17 III OF YOUNG TOMMY MORRIS AND OTHER GREAT MEN 23 IV THE SPREAD OF GOLFING IN ENGLAND 29 V THE WEAPONS OF GOLF IN THE SEVENTIES 35 VI HOW MEN OF WESTWARD HO! WENT ADVENTURING IN THE NORTH 41 VII GOLF AT OXFORD 47 VIII THE START OF THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE GOLF MATCHES 53 IX GOLFING PILGRIMAGES 59 X WESTWARD HO! HOYLAKE AND ST... Continue reading book >>
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