You begin
to see how difficult it is to achieve the perfect stick.
Well, each one of us must let go those properties which his own
stick can do best without. For myself I insist on this--my stick
must be good for hitting and good to hit with. A stick, we are
agreed, is something to have in the hand when walking. But there
are times when we sit down; and if our journey shall have taken
us to the beach, our stick must at once be propped in the sand
while from a suitable distance we throw stones at it. However
beautiful the sea, its beauty can only be appreciated properly in
this fashion. Scenery must not be taken at a gulp; we must absorb
it unconsciously. With the mind gently exercised as to whether we
scored a two on the band or a one just below it, and with the
muscles of the arm at stretch, we are in a state ideally
receptive of beauty.
And, for my other essential of a country stick, it must be
possible to grasp it by the wrong end and hit a ball with it. So
it must have no ferrule, and the handle must be heavy and
straight. In this way was golf born; its creator roamed the
fields after his picnic lunch, knocking along the cork from his
bottle. At first he took seventy-nine from the gate in one field
to the oak tree in the next; afterwards fifty-four. Then suddenly
he saw the game. We cannot say that he w;is no lover of Nature.
The desire to knock a ball about, to play silly games with a
stick, comes upon a man most keenly when he is happy; let it be
ascribed that he is happy to the streams and the hedges and the
sunlight through the trees.
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