The Professional Golfer in Britain

Why Many British Experts Face Hardships Unknown to American Players

BERNARD DARWIN

THE British professional golfer has been a good deal in the lime-light recently on account of the unfortunate regularity with which he gets beaten by his American brethren in his own Open Championship. He has been abused by some people and excused by others. The abuse seems to me to be out of place, and as for excuses, the less we have of them the better. It may however be worth while to tell American readers something about this professional of ours, his life, his position and his prospects, as compared with those of his brothers on the other side of the Atlantic.

Anybody who can look back on golf for a good number of years has seen many changes in the game and in those who play it, but certainly no greater change in anything to do with golf than in the professional golfer. Forty years or so ago the professionals, i t may be said, were all Scotchmen. Comparatively

few of them were definitely attached to clubs, because there were not enough clubs wanting their services. There were, of course, outstanding figures such as Old Tom Morris at St. Andrews and Charley Hunter at Prestwick, but some of our very best players led a hand-tomouth existence, doing a little club making and a little caddying, playing matches when someone wanted to play with them, not too rich or too proud to wear their masters' old clothes.

SUCH a life bred a reckless type of man who took little care for the morrow,—often a very pleasant creature, but often also alas! with a taste for whiskey. In the summer they earned a certain amount of money; in the winter, for the most part, they got along as best they could. Gradually more and more courses sprang up in England and this meant more permanent jobs for those who cared to cross the border. The professional who took such a job was often a jack-of-al1-trades, for he was greenkeeper as well as professional and club maker, and could not disdain to push a mowing machine or pull a roller. Still, he had an improved status, for he was no longer, as it were, playing for hire; he had a definite, assured place. Moreover he became a much steadier, soberer, more self-respecting man, if only because clubs exacted from a permanent servant a standard of conduct not expected from a casual ally in a foursome.

I began by talking of forty-odd years ago. If we take a rather more modern period, some thirty and more years ago, when the famous

"Triumvirate" were beginning their careers, wc find that the professional's position was still a comparatively hard and lowly one. The parents of Sandy Herd tried to make of him first a baker and then a plasterer, because they thought the prospects of a golf professional too dubious. However the boy's love of golf was too strong for them and when, after a temporary engagement at an Irish course, he came home and poured a pocketful of Sovereigns into his mother's lap, they had to believe that perhaps after all he was right. Braid only became a professional after some years as a joiner and a club maker. Harry Vardon's first job was that of both professional and green-keeper at an extremely inferior nine-hole course in the Northof England, where even he had too little to do and took to playing cricket. Taylor, after beginning as a gardener, worked on the greens at Westward Ho! and then became professional and green-keeper combined—at Burnham in Somerset, where, this year, he watched his eldest son, an Oxford undergraduate, playing in the University match. These were all humble beginnings, but these four were all men of outstanding character as different as need be from the happy-go-lucky rapscallions of previous generations. How much of the high standard of conduct and bearing now to be found among professionals is due to them no one can measure for certain, but there can be no doubt that their example has done much.

Thus gradually there came into existence more and more English professionals just as in America the "homebreds" have first supplemented and then outnumbered the imported Scots. There were more exhibition matches, more tournaments, bigger prizes; the professional became more and more of a somebody in the world of golf. And he certainly lived up to his improved position, so much so indeed that

for many years now the amateur can generally be distinguished from the professional at an Open Championship by his older and less resplendent raiment. One has felt sorely tempted at times to quote, of the professional, Mr. Yellowplush's apt remark about a valet; "He's genrally a hapicr, idler, handsomer, mer genlmnly man than his master."

Yet as a matter of fact, with a very few exceptions, I do not think the British professional's lot is today a particularly prosperous one. Taking into consideration preand post-war prices I imagine he is not as prosperous as he used to be. Certainly he is not at all a rich or fortunate man as compared with the gorgeous persons that he secs arriving here from America. He sees them staying at smart hotels, dashing hither and thither in motor cars, bringing their own caddies with them, and though he says very little, I imagine he thinks a good deal and that, being human, he is sometimes inclined to be envious. What money American professionals earn I, of course, do not know. As to the British professional, I have been at some pains to find out from a high, though in this case anonymous, authority. I will give a few figures later, but first I shall compare the lots in other respects of the two sets of professionals.

THERE is one respect in which the American professional seems to have the better of it, but I am not so sure that he really docs. He appears to be (I really do not know how to express this without appearing snobbish) much more on terms of social equality with the members of his club than the British professional is. I know this remark does not apply to all American clubs, but at any rate at many of them he seems to have the free run of the club house, to treat the members as his equals, to call them— metaphorically if not actually—by their Christian names. Here he docs not do that, but then I do not believe that he wants to do it. There is a good deal to be said in this life for having our sphere definitely marked out for us, for knowing exactly where wc stand. I remember talking to one of the best of our younger professionals on this subject, and he remarked that he would not like to go to a certain club in the North of England—a very good billet as far as money is concerned—just because it was so free and easy and the members slapped the professional on the back. He liked to meet the members on the links or in his shop and after that to be quit of them. I believe that the same attitude of mind would be found among many of our most respected and self respecting professionals. I also talked the subject over with a very well known professional from America and he had something of the same view of it, though from a different angle. What he said in effect was this: "You in Britain think we make a great splash in staying at the best hotels and so on. We have to do it even if we don't want to. Our members expect us to. If we wanted to go elsewhere, they would take a room for us and would not like it at all if we did not come." As I said before, this is a snobbish and uncomfortable problem, but it has to be touched on if I am to give any kind of fair or true picture. For my part I am stodgy and British and conservative enough to think that in this respect the British professional is really the freer and perhaps the happier man of the two.

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Now something as to the British professional's position from a business point of view. Of course there are some "plums" in the profession, clubs where there is a large, regular amount of play all the year round or a great holiday season which brings people with plenty of money to spend. Moreover there are some professionals who by their own energy and ability have built fine club-making businesses from which they derive a good income. But I repeat that I doubt if, on the whole, the professional is as well off as he used to be. First, though it is an old story now, the rubber cored ball has hit him because there is no trade in remaking balls and very little in the mending of clubs, which seem nowadays to last forever. Then the big stores in big towns have cut into him. It is so easy to walk into a store and buy a dozen balls, or a club that looks very inviting in the window as you arc walking home from your office, thinking of your next week's golf. Again I do not think that members take out the professional to play as much as they used to do. It seems to me that, when I was a boy, people regarded it as a duty to give the professional an occasional turn, just as once upon a time travelers at an inn always ordered a bottle of wine "for the good of the house". I know one or two professionals who are in constant demand as foursome partners, but the average professional does not seem to get much play. He does, no doubt, get a good deal of teaching—teaching as a rule stout, middle-aged, hopelessly incompetent ladies, and a soul-destroying, golf-destroying occupation it must be, though it does bring some grist to the mill. Finally, the professional is certainly not in such demand as he used to be for exhibition matches. I think —I am not sure—that this is because, though we have some fine golfers, we have not any of the overpowering character and personality of the older generation. There was always a thrill in watching the inimitably graceful Vardon, the dogged Taylor, with his teeth clenched and cap over his eyes, the waggling Herd, the imperturbable and tremendous Braid. By comparison with them, X or Y or Z, are only very skilful hitters of the ball. This is not the only reason; the succession of defeats at American hands may be another, but there is something in the explanations I gave first.

To come down to brass tacks, the retaining fee of a professional attached to an average club is supposed to be one Pound a week, but there are, I am told and I believe, many who accept less. In any case one Pound a week is not much, and the professional has to depend for his main source of income on lessons, repairs and the sale of clubs and balls. This, as I have explained, is not a gold mine, and probably many and many a professional, a good sound man, a good player, and a good fellow, does not make a bit more than £5 a week. If he makes £300 a year, he is doing fairly well, and, as things are, is content. Leaving out of account a separate club-making business such as I mentioned in the case of certain players, £500 a year means a good job, much above the average. The American professional can, in some distinguished cases, afford to be unattached and makes a great deal of money in that way. We have here only one professional who can be called "unattached" in that sense. This is Abe Mitchell, who has an engagement as private playing professional with Mr. Ryder, a gentleman who gave the cup played for this year in the International match between the American and British professionals. I would not have mentioned names, but for the fact that Mitchell's salary has been already stated in the press. Therefore there is no harm in saying that his salary is, I believe, £750 a year with £250 for expenses, and anything else he can earn by way of prize money, and so on. Purely as a professional golfer he is the best paid man in the British Isles. No doubt the "Triumvirate" have made money, because they were not happy-go-lucky but have been careful hardworking men, as well as great golfers, and have built up good businesses, but that is rather outside the scope of my inquiry.

I said I did not approve of excuses but it may be permissible to say that if it is often hard work for a British professional to live, it must be harder work for him to play well. He has a good deal of anxiety, a good many other things to do, and not much opportunity of playing except in one brief season of tournaments just before the championship. He does not have many chances of practicing as he is told he ought to do. At least I do not think so. I know of one professional who had what appeared a good billet at a good club near London; he was really a good player, too. And yet he could not make enough to keep himself and his family—not a large one. Now I am glad to say he has got what is really a good job, but I quote his story to show how hard it must be for a man in such circumstances to concentrate his mind on playing the best golf that is in him.

The British professional as I know him, and I see a fair amount of him one way or the other, is a very good fellow and I don't think he has, on the whole, such a good time as he deserves.