A First Lesson in Golf

Showing the Importance. to a Girl, of Selecting Exactly the Right Instructor

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

FOR many years, until I met Enid, I wondered why I took so many lessons in golf.

Nothing ever seemed to come of them; nothing, that is, worth mentioning. But still I persisted in my studious course, tackling the new principles of every pro, buying every new book, practising before a mirror (without a ball, naturally), and driving into a net (without a mirror, naturally). I became a marvellously adept indoor golfer. My form was a symposium 'of the precepts of all the topnotchcrs, and I spoke golf without a trace of duffer accent. But, alas! All the duffer traits still exposed themselves shamelessly and unmistakably in my game.

Strive as I would, I could not improve it. Every morning as I planted my hob-nails on the first tee and faced the smiling fair-way I used to address the gleaming pellet at my feet somewhat as follows: "Now, you round, wrinkle-faced rubber-hearted wretch, I am going to swat you right on the trade-mark with one good championship clout, just the way I used to do this spring when I was practising in the net on top of the Midiron Club, do you remember? Do you recall how I used to pick you cleanly off the cocoa-fibre door-mat and soak you—spang into the mail-sack marked '200 yds.'? Do you? Well, I'm going to do it again—Now, steady! Slow back, wrists first, drop the left shoulder, head down, let 'er go, bang! There."

The rest of the address is deleted by the censor.

The ball usually trickled weakly to some impossible part of the immediate foreground or, starting bravely, suddenly spun to right or left, or ducked in a sharp curve that would have made the fortune of any baseball pitcher. I once hit an Italian laborer who was hiding in a drain-pipe back of a thick bunker. He had been nicked once before and was very ball-shy; consequently, at my cry of "fore!" he had ducked nimbly into his large pipe with which he was amusing himself, pulling the pipe up around his ears, so to speak. Would you believe it? my ball sought him out and beaned him with deadly accuracy, without having touched anything else in its flight. Both the ball and the Italian dropped dead, or nearly so, and inasmuch as he was the only laborer the club had been able to get that season, my summer, I need not say, was anything but a pleasant one.

The Hand of Providence

AND then I met Enid!—and suddenly, one heavenly day, at the beginning of the present golf-year, all the reason, the why and the wherefore of my struggles was made plain to me. It was all in order that I might give Enid her first golf-lesson.

I am not outwardly what would be called a religious man, in a church-going plate-passing sense, but inwardly I have a very deep, spiritual vein, and in time of stress I often lean heavily on the faith of my forebears, which my Aunt Emma—of whom you have doubtless heard me speak,—voiced so beautifully the day the goat ate her chemise. "Some day," said Aunt Emma, "we shall know why this happened. Some day all will be made plain."

Enid had never played golf. Not once in all her twenty-two years, as she artlessly assured me, had she "had a cue in her hand".

I could have laughed at her expression, but ray heart was too much stirred by her beauty. Enid, with her dark hair and grey-blue eyes— really, she was too wonderful!

"Let's have a round tomorrow morning," I said. "I'll give you a lesson."

"Will you?" she cried, flushing happily. "That will be perfect! But let's play early, before the others start. I shall be so embarrassed."

The Useful Vardon Grip

HOW fresh and exquisite she looked as she stood waiting for me near the caddyhouse, truly the Goddess of the Morning! The instant I saw her I knew that my doom was sealed.

"But where are your clubs?" she asked, as I drew near.

"My dear child," I replied, "you did not suppose that I was going to play? This is your first lesson. You will need my undivided attention, for it is most important in golf that a beginner should have a proper knowledge of fundamentals. I have been taught this by twelve different teachers."

"It sounds reasonable," she agreed. "Well, let's go!"

"We will try the drive first," I said, in my best platform manner, and proceeded to explain in a simple and lucid way the primary elements of stance, body-swing, grip and so on. Never had I realized that I knew so much. It was perfectly overwhelming the mass of knowledge that was pent up in me, the accretion of countless lessons, which was now to be imparted somehow to this exquisite hesitating young creature before me.

I realized at once her helplessness and my difficulty. Clearly it was only by actually and physically taking her in hand that I could hope properly to show her those important fundamentals. Take the simple question of body-swing, for instance. How in the world could I explain to Enid what I meant without actually showing her? After trying*twice and failing, I placed my hands with professional firmness about her trim waist and said:

"The turning movement must begin here, so. Do you see?"

"I do," she answered, "—and so does the caddy-master."

Was there a faint indication of a smile in the corners of her rosy lips?

"Let us proceed to the second tee," I said, somewhat agitated.

The second and third holes, being in full sight of the club-house, gave us very' little trouble. We did not keep an accurate score, the main idea being to impart instruction, and you may believe that I poured forth a bewildering and stupendous amount of it. But on the fourth tee, which is hidden in a charmingly secluded dell, I had a great deal of trouble with Enid's hands.

Try as I would, I could not seem to make her use them properly, until at last in despair I said:

"Come here, my dear, and sit on this bench

with me. Now let us suppose that vour right hand and my left are a pair. In' the Vardon grip the fingers interlock, so, you see?, while in the Ray grip, the thumb comes into play, thus. There are about seventeen of these different grips, but the one I prefer personally is this. The right hand is almost completely covered by the left and held quite firmly, do you see?"

"Rather!" she said, flushing as she rose. "It apparently makes one press a bit."

Bless the child, she was coming on.

Lor the next few holes Enid absolutely refused to take any more seated instruction or do aught but fight the little ball which verily seemed possessed of a devil. In vain I suggested a rest at the ninth and a drink of water from the spring on the eleventh. Nothing, it appeared, would divert my lovely partner from the stern obligations of the game.

As we dragged toward the home hole 1 saw my opportunities for further progress gradually falling by the wayside. Despairing, nettled, angry with myself, I redoubled the exactions of my professorship. I taught my pupil until I was black in the face. I carped and corrected and criticized. I heaped her with adjurations to keep her head down, her eyc-onthe-ball, her elbow in, her toes out; her entire anatomy I intimately abused, and the ball, as if it were my devilish accomplice, hopped and bounded and side-stepped and hid until at length with cruel satisfaction I began to see my pupil's coolness deserting her. She was being worn out. Mercilessly I increased my efforts, calling in the reserve battalions of precepts which I had learned with such bitterness.

"Keep your right foot further forward," I said icily. "Don't crook your left knee, go back slowly—"

The Successful Match

THE end came with dramatic suddenness. A The shot preceding it had been a wretched flivver and the ball lay under a huckleberry bush, practically unplayable. The shade of a gnarled tree complicated matters delightfully.

"What club do you propose to use?" I asked coldly.

Enid, pale and trembling, looked at the ball.

"If I only had my button-hook!" she said, and burst into tears.

In an instant my arms were about her.

"My darling," I cried, and to my joy she did not draw back,—"My angel,—do not worry about this wretched game. Forget all I have told you. Look up, not down. Grip as tightly as you can—with both hands! Keep both eyes closed! There!"

We spent ten thrilling minutes in the exquisite joy of our discovery, and then, as I struggled out into the fairway, Enid said, with a lovely air of proprietorship:

"And now you must get rid of that horrid ball for me—drive it way off somewhere."

"Drive it off!" I protested. "Never! That ball shall be gold-plated, and handed down to future generations. Besides," I added, "that driving business is hard to do without a net."

The dear girl was too confused to urge me further, and, linking our hands in a Vardon grip, we walked slowly back to the club.