Product Description
(The books I publish are always proof read and corrected before publishing on Kindle! David Snode)
"When I get very old and feeble and my joints creak and I begin to find croquet too strenuous a pastime, then I may take up golf." This was my answer to the first invitation I had to play this game. I felt that to ask me to take up a game suitable only for mollycoddles, as it then seemed to me, was asking too much; I, who had been intensely interested in athletic sports ever since I could remember — baseball, football, row-
ing and what not.
I can remember how my lip curled with disdain when I saw the red coats and knickerbockers.
It was up in Connecticut, a few miles below New Haven, at a summering place called Woodmont, that the above remarks were made, and it was to a young lady that they were addressed. However, I was inveigled into watching the game. We reached the first tee and she made a little mountain of sand about two inches high and asked me to get a ball out of the pocket of the bag. I did it rather awkwardly, as the whole outfit was strange and I wasn't interested.
I handed it over and she put it on the mound of sand, which still further prejudiced me against the game and convinced me that there was no doubt of its being suitable for mollycoddles ; why, they didn't even give the ball a glance. In baseball the ball had a look in; it took some skill to hit a ball in motion and still more if it had a curve and was coming fast.
She took out a driver — she explained that was the name of the club selected — and then began a still further preliminary course of action in the nature of trial swings, shifting of grip, gage of wind, light, humidity, and doubtless a hundred other things, till I was thoroughly disgusted. If they did all that in order to hit a miserable little white pill on a mound they were carrying the thing to absurdity.
The young lady said nothing, but swung and hit the ball with a sharp clicking sound and we were off. The ball went about a hundred yards and had an inshoot “Gee see it curve" I exclaimed, and then she said in answer to my criticism that the ball didn't go very far for all the trouble she had taken: "I have been off my drive for over a week and have been slicing right along, but that was rather a fair drive, and I'll wager a box of candy that you cannot do as well.”
That was more than I could stand, and I took the candy against its equivalent in cigars. I
took another ball out of the bag and asked if I could baby it up on a mound of sand as she had done. "Certainly." Well, I did. No foolish preliminaries for me. I swung at it with a force that would have sent a baseball over the outfield fence. My hat flew off, and I felt as though I had broken my collar-bone. My fingers tingled, and I was dizzy. Laughter brought me to myself and glancing at the mound of sand I saw that white, clean ball still resting there. That roused all the fury in me. I hated that ball then, and I have yet a lingering suspicion of all balls, and am always on my guard in their presence. I
had lost my bet, and the remark that ""It isn't as easy as it looks" only added to my discomfiture.
Well thought I, it's a game of wits. I had better see how the trouble had happened and I
walked away from the ball, as she had done, and took a more cautious swing at a blade of grass. Missed that, too. Saw the trouble now, and hit the grass next time. Now I could hit the ball. I swung good and hard and reached for it and connected. That drive was my undoing. The feel of the club sinking through that ball and the way that ball traveled sent a thrill through me that I’ll never forget.
That was ten years ago, and what time I could spare from business since has been spent on the links. I felt very far indeed from being a mollycoddle.
"When I get very old and feeble and my joints creak and I begin to find croquet too strenuous a pastime, then I may take up golf." This was my answer to the first invitation I had to play this game. I felt that to ask me to take up a game suitable only for mollycoddles, as it then seemed to me, was asking too much; I, who had been intensely interested in athletic sports ever since I could remember — baseball, football, row-
ing and what not.
I can remember how my lip curled with disdain when I saw the red coats and knickerbockers.
It was up in Connecticut, a few miles below New Haven, at a summering place called Woodmont, that the above remarks were made, and it was to a young lady that they were addressed. However, I was inveigled into watching the game. We reached the first tee and she made a little mountain of sand about two inches high and asked me to get a ball out of the pocket of the bag. I did it rather awkwardly, as the whole outfit was strange and I wasn't interested.
I handed it over and she put it on the mound of sand, which still further prejudiced me against the game and convinced me that there was no doubt of its being suitable for mollycoddles ; why, they didn't even give the ball a glance. In baseball the ball had a look in; it took some skill to hit a ball in motion and still more if it had a curve and was coming fast.
She took out a driver — she explained that was the name of the club selected — and then began a still further preliminary course of action in the nature of trial swings, shifting of grip, gage of wind, light, humidity, and doubtless a hundred other things, till I was thoroughly disgusted. If they did all that in order to hit a miserable little white pill on a mound they were carrying the thing to absurdity.
The young lady said nothing, but swung and hit the ball with a sharp clicking sound and we were off. The ball went about a hundred yards and had an inshoot “Gee see it curve" I exclaimed, and then she said in answer to my criticism that the ball didn't go very far for all the trouble she had taken: "I have been off my drive for over a week and have been slicing right along, but that was rather a fair drive, and I'll wager a box of candy that you cannot do as well.”
That was more than I could stand, and I took the candy against its equivalent in cigars. I
took another ball out of the bag and asked if I could baby it up on a mound of sand as she had done. "Certainly." Well, I did. No foolish preliminaries for me. I swung at it with a force that would have sent a baseball over the outfield fence. My hat flew off, and I felt as though I had broken my collar-bone. My fingers tingled, and I was dizzy. Laughter brought me to myself and glancing at the mound of sand I saw that white, clean ball still resting there. That roused all the fury in me. I hated that ball then, and I have yet a lingering suspicion of all balls, and am always on my guard in their presence. I
had lost my bet, and the remark that ""It isn't as easy as it looks" only added to my discomfiture.
Well thought I, it's a game of wits. I had better see how the trouble had happened and I
walked away from the ball, as she had done, and took a more cautious swing at a blade of grass. Missed that, too. Saw the trouble now, and hit the grass next time. Now I could hit the ball. I swung good and hard and reached for it and connected. That drive was my undoing. The feel of the club sinking through that ball and the way that ball traveled sent a thrill through me that I’ll never forget.
That was ten years ago, and what time I could spare from business since has been spent on the links. I felt very far indeed from being a mollycoddle.
