"- For He Driveth Furiously"

Edward Blackwell—The Master Golf Driver of All Time

BERNARD DARWIN

THERE is, I suppose, little doubt that one reason for the popularity of golf is the sensual delight of a fair, full drive, which if not positively long, is at least relatively so. The sensation is one of which we do not easily tire; the spectacle of the ball soaring away into the blue is ever beautiful, so beautiful that if our own ball refuses to soar, we can even unselfishly enjoy the sight of someone else's. All the world loves a driver, and to bear a name which, for over thirty years has stood alone as synonymous with driving, is no small distinction. That name beyond all doubt is Blackwell—to be more precise, Ted Blackwell; to be more ceremonious, Mr. Edward Baird Hay Blackwell, now Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Captains come and go—all occupy for their year of office a distinguished position, but some are more distinguished than others. Some are Princes, some are the illustrious obscure among Fifeshire lairds, some are famous golfers. All stand "one moment as the angels stand" a little nervous upon the first tee, about to strike off that first ball, which shall, to the accompaniment of the booming of cannon, announce their entry into high office. No more picturesque or popular figure has ever stood there than Mr. Edward Blackwell, and there is something exciting in the fact of the historic driver of all time driving off this historic ball.

AND in fact Mr. Blackwell rose to the occasion. In a sense he could scarcely fail to do so for, had he topped, how noble would have been the burst of laughter. But he did better than that. I read—for an evil fate prevented me from seeing him—that he really, as he might say himself, "got under the tail" of the ball and hit the greatest shot that has ever been struck on such an occasion. Some distinguished persons have foozled (the Prince of Wales and Lord Haig among them) but this Captain drove far over the road and into the dim distance toward the burn, some 250 or 260 yards; and there is something appropriate in the fact that the caddie who retrieved the ball bore the equally illustrious golfing name of Herd.

Mr. Blackwell is now fifty-nine years old. He is still a long, and on his best days, a very long driver, but since no one can wholly defy the years, not quite so long as some men, who are thirty and five-and-thirty years younger. His very greatest feats of hitting were done with the gutty ball, whose stony heart he could touch as did no one else. It would be idle to enquire whether he was, with the gutty, relatively longer than Mr. Tollcv or Mr. Guilford, or whoever else we may choose, with the rubber core today. It is enough that he was at his zenith, generally recognised as unapproachable, and that he has impressed himself on the golfers of his time as the driver of the game. If we watch him even today it is not difficult to see why. For one thing we enjoy seeing him hit, because he so clearly enjoys hitting. Not that he is a demonstrative golfer; he is anything but that, for he is a man of few words and fewer gestures: but when he has hit one a little harder even than usual, we are subtly but certainly conscious that it has given him pleasure, that the ultimate destinv of the ball is a small matter compared with the glorious sensation of lashing it. To be ready to go to the deuce for a big drive is not wise perhaps, but it is, as all but the too cold and calculating must admit, an endearing trait.

THEN again, before ever he hits the ball, JL Mr. Blackwell is a formidable and magnificent spectacle. He is over 6 feet and weighs some two hundred and ten pounds, but no mere dimensions can convey any adequate notion of the overpowering aspect of him, as he stands glaring at the ball with set teeth, and with those vast eyebrows of his contracted into a frown. One small fact may be more eloquent than any description. No golfer is more beloved, and he has won many victories; yet I never heard that, after any one of them, any band of enthusiasts contemplated carrying him in triumph from the stricken field. The spirit was willing enough but the flesh felt itself altogether too weak. One might almost apply to that tremendous figure Congreve's lines about a Church,

"By its own weight made stedfast and immovable it strikes a?i awe

And terror on my aching sight"

And then when it does move, everything seems to move, and that with a fierce swiftness. Enjoying the stroke as he does, Mr. Blackwell allows every part and every muscle of him to share in his joy. As some spectator at a Championship is reported to have said, "I would give that man a sovereign an hour, just to go out and drive for my benefit; it is simply glorious: he puts his head into it, he puts his shoulders into it, he puts his back into it, his hips, his legs and his feet, and by jove! his teeth and his eyebrows!"

Certainly there never was a more wholehearted and whole-bodied effort, and yet never was there one more graceful. "Graceful" and "pretty" seem somehow punv and inadequate epithets, as applied to anything so big as Mr. Blackwell; we must rather call up our reserves of adjectives and call his swing grand or majestic, yet in the case of any smaller man, graceful is the first word that would come to us. Nearly twenty-five years ago Mr. F.verard wrote, "His style in driving is the very ideal of orthodoxy; his swing, though extremely rapid, is so even and symmetrical that its rapidity does not especially attract attention." That is a description with which no one could quarrel, though perhaps the very modern might add, in a footnote, "Old-fashioned orthodoxy," in that there is no overlapping grip, the right hand is held loose in the ancient manner and the swing is something longer than is now fashionable. At any rate it is a fascinating and glorious swing, and despite the years, it is as rapid as ever, and if just a little of the length has departed, there is the same awe-inspiring impression of power, the same superb freedom.

"I DO not think that Mr. Blackwell has ever played golf in America, and yet America has had a good deal to do with his golfing history. Almost as soon as he left school he went with two of his brothers to California. That was in the eighties, and there was no golf in California then. He stayed there for several years at a time, and only at long intervals came home to gladden his native St. Andrews with his hitting. Consequently at just the most important and malleable golfing age, when he should normally have been putting a certain finish and polish on his game, Mr. Blackwell only touched a club every three or four years or so. In another respect too, America has affected his golf, since on the one occasion on which he reached the final of our Amateur Championship, his opponent was Mr. VV. J. Travis, and the match at Sandwich in 190+ was won by America.

In one sense the Sandwich course should just have been made for Mr. Blackwell, since the big carries over the big sandhills simply did not exist for such a hitter. In another sense the course was against him, since the grass at the side of the fairway was that summer, if I remember rightly, particularly long. He was sure to get into it now and then, and when he did, not even his strength was of much avail. However, that match and Mr. Travis' great putting are now ancient history, and no one has ever suggested that the right man did not win.

AMERICA continued to influence Mr. AABlackwell after it was all over. From watching Mr. Travis he began to study the art of putting. Till then he had used a rather light putting cleek, and had been a haphazard putter, who putted entirely by the light of nature, and that not very successfully. The effect of Sandwich was that at first he was seen experimenting with a Schenectady—the weapon that had compassed his downfall—and then took to the ordinary orthodox aluminium putter.

It is seldom that a change of club can cause any permanent change, but it certainly did sc in Mr. Blackwell's case, for he became and has remained ever since a very good putter indeed. Perhaps his brother Ernley had something to do with it. He, the youngest of four brothers, though a good player, was never a great driver, but "See some strange comfort everv state attend" and Mr. (now Sir) Ernley Blackwell was always a beautiful putter, who hit the ball sweetly and truly. He, I think, preached to his elder brother the doctrine of the simplest way, the starting of the ball rolling smoothly on its road, and the combination of preacher and club worked wonders, so that today few people strike the ball a smoother blow on the green than Mr. Blackwell does. It is today the great strength of his game. Yet there is something almost tragic in the fact that he had to wait till he was nearly forty before seeing the light. If he had not had to go abroad when he was young, if he had learnt to putt fifteen years earlier, what might he not have done with his powers?

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As it has been with his putting so too to some extent with his iron play. When he was young his long iron play was as terrific as his driving. Mr. Everard wrote, "His power with the deck simply beggars description, and it would probably be no exaggeration to say that he can drive further with it than nine out of ten fine drivers can with a play club." His shorter shots however, were rather coarse and unfinished. That he has mended in later life, and today he may be seen to play mashie niblick shots as delicately as need be. It may almost be said that "what he has lost on the swings he has gained on the roundabouts". At any rate, it is a rather wonderful thing that when the first match between England and Scotland was played in 1902 Mr. Blackwell was thirty-six years old. Yet of the twenty men who played in that match Mr. Blackwell is the only one who also played in this year's International Match at Westward Ho!

On the day before this furious mighty driver drove himself into office, the Royal and Ancient Club in conclave were invited to recommend the use of a very slightly limited ball in next year's Championships. The two events had no connection and yet there seems something symbolic in the fact that the Club decided by a derisively large majority to have nothing to do with the proposal. It was as if they had said, "No, we have enjoyed watching Ted Blackwell's driving too much to allow its length to be curtailed by a single yard".

Way down deep in the human heart there is the love of long driving j nothing will eradicate it; no compensation advantages can be set off against the loss of ever so little of it. When I was last at St. Andrews, the ground was hard and there was a mighty wind that blew us homeward. The lengths of the last nine holes became farcical, since the puniest were hitting their tee shots some three hundred yards. We said those holes were spoilt; so they were: as holes they became hardly worth the playing; and yet we enjoyed our long drives even though we knew that every Tom, Dick and Harry was hitting as far as we were.

I suppose that each of us dreamed, for the moment, the wild, intoxicating dream that he was Blackwell.