He will never experience that happy
surprise with which we hail our best strokes. Only his bad
strokes surprise him, and then we may suppose that he is not
happy. His length and accuracy are mechanical; they are not the
result, as so often in our case, of some suddenly applied maxim
or some suddenly discovered innovation. The only thing which can
vary in his game is his putting, and putting is not golf but
croquet.
But of course we, too, are going to be as good as Vardon one day.
We are only postponing the day because meanwhile it is so
pleasant to be bad. And it is part of the charm of being bad at
golf that in a moment, in a single night, we may become good. If
the bad cricketer said to a good cricketer, "What am I doing
wrong?" the only possible answer would be, "Nothing particular,
except that you can't play cricket." But if you or I were to say
to our scratch friend, "What am I doing wrong?" he would reply at
once, "Moving the head" or "Dropping the right knee" or "Not
getting the wrists in soon enough," and by to-morrow we should be
different players. Upon such a little depends, or seems to the
eighteen-handicap to depend, excellence in golf.
And so, perfectly happy in our present badness and perfectly
confident of our future goodness, we long-handicap men remain.
Perhaps it would be pleasanter to be a little more certain of
getting the ball safely off the first tee; perhaps at the
fourteenth hole, where there is a right of way and the public
encroach, we should like to feel that we have done with topping;
perhaps---
Well, perhaps we might get our handicap down to fifteen this
summer.
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