New Champions for Old

Portraits of Dr. Tweddell and the Redoubtable John Ball at the Matches at Hoylake

BERNARD DARWIN

TWO pictures will. I think, remain clearly in the minds of those who saw our British amateur championship at Hoylake. One, of course, must be that of tin; new champion, Dr. Tweddell. a very good and interesting golfer though hardly a picturesque one because he has almost to excess that form of genius which consists in taking pains. The other was our old champion, John Ball, making what I fear will be a last appearance in the championship upon his native links of Hoylake; and this sight was picturesque and moving beyond words. I must put the two in that order though I confess in this instance to worshipping the setting rather than the rising sun. But wait! Before I come to either there was a third memorable something at Hoylake and, as I am writing for America, I will put it first. This was the sudden and dramatic appearance of Mr. Haley, a young American golfer—and a very good one—who fluttered our dovecotes for us by beating Mr. Tolley.

This happened in the third round and we believed that by the end of the second round all the American players had been slain. It was not so however for the most formidable of our invaders, Mr. Haley, lay concealed under an entry from an English Club, Sundridge Bark, a not particularly well known course in the Kentish suburbs of London. Mr. Haley, who is in England I believe, for a short course of study, had only just had time to acquire here the "national handicap" allowing him to enter for the championship and had not had time or, at any rate, had not thought of entering from an American club. The fact that "Haley of Sundridge Park" had got through two rounds meant nothing in particular but there is always a crowd to watch the magnetic and melodramatic Mr. Tolley, and so the spectators assembled to see his match. As soon as Ave saw his adversary we kneAV that all the Americans were not dead.

MR. Haley looks a typical young American athlete. I should expect to see him running a quarter mile for Yale and Harvard against Oxford and Cambridge. Moreover, as a golfer he has what we regard enviously here as the typical American style. He had only hit a shot or two when we realized that here was a dangerous player; and we have been so beaten and frightened in tin; last few years that it does not need much for an American terror to take us by the throat. Mr. Haley was putting very well and hitting the ball a very long way —quite as far as his opponent. Still with seven holes to play, Mr. Tolley seemed to have the match safely in hand. He was two up; he had put a beautiful second right on to the twelfth green and Mr. Haley had put his in a hunker. We breathed again.

Then things began to happen. Mr. Haley hacked his way out of the hunker, holed a good putt with all the coolness in life and got his half. At the next—a short hole surrounded by a mine field of bunkers—Mr. Tolley was not on the green; Mr. Haley was, and close to the hole. Down to one. At the fifteenth Mr. Haley holed a good putt for a four. All square. For the next two holes Mr. Tolley managed to hold his attacker off by getting gallantly out of various bunkers and holing gallant putts. But lie was being relentlessly hunted and he was hunted to death at the last where, rather unluckily, he got a cruel lie just off the fairway. Mr. Haley was also off the fairway hut he got a good lie (I think he deserved some luck after being robbed of two holes running;) he played the hole very coolly and precisely in the orthodox four and won it.

Mr. Haley was now the most be-photographed and be-autographed player on the links and he lived well up to his new fame. He won his next match against a good player, Major Thorburn, and then went down at the last hole to Mr. Gillies in a rough-and-tumble fight, in which he had squared the match after being three down with five to play. Certainly we shall not have forgotten him the next time he comes to play whether he enters from Sundridge Park or from anywhere else.

Now for our new and extremely worthy champion, Dr. Tweddell. He is about twenty-nine or thirty years old and has just settled down to practise his profession at the country town of Stonebridge in Worcestershire. By birth he is an Englishman; by golfing education he is a Scotchman for he was at Aberdeen University and learnt most of his golf there. If I saw him playing without knowing who he was, I think I should take him for an American. He has, I am sure, not watched American golfers for nothing. In his stance, in his very quiet address to the hall, shorn of all that florid, ornamental and slashing quality that was once so typical of Scotland, in his leisurely taking hack of the club and in his high iron shots played right up to the pin, there is a decided flavour of those who have invaded us so successfully.

HE is not like our invaders in one respect because he is apt to play very slowly. During his earlier rounds his pace was funereal, his study of every shot protracted. Then when he found that as a result the whole field of players was becoming silted up in a waiting mass behind him, he quickened his methods. He played none the worse for it and his golf became a true pleasure to watch.

It is, I suppose, rather a prosaic and obvious remark, hut it nevertheless is true that successful golf consists in doing the same thing over and over again. This art Dr. Tweddell has mastered. He has the great virtue of consistency, which some of our leading players so sadly lack. He seems to have reduced the game to its simplest terms; he indulges in as small a variety of shots as possible; he may not he an alluring golfer or not at any rate to old-fashioned eyes, but beyond all doubt he is a very fine one. He does "deliver the goods".

In the final he had a very tired adversary who did not carry quite enough guns for him and he won easily, as and when he pleased. His severest ordeal was against Mr. Wethered in the semi final. Mr. Wethered had been winning most of his matches by a magnificent home-coming after a shaky and sketchy beginning. He had seemed to be settling down at last and looked like a winner, but against Dr. Tweddell he relapsed and once again began with a series of mistakes. This time the pitcher went once too often to the well.

Other opponents had not taken full advantage of these mistakes. Dr. Tweddell rubbed them in for all he was worth. There were five mistakes, one at each of the first five holes, and each of them lost a hole. Dr. Tweddell played the five to perfection and won them all. Such a beginning could not be retrieved. Mr. Wethered did launch a counter-attack and got two holes hack. Then, when we were all a-tiptoe wondering if the impossible was to happen, the counter-attack slackened and died away. Dr. Tweddell won comfortably enough by four and three and with that victory the championship was virtually and deservedly in his pocket.

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And now for Mr. John Ball, eight times champion, nearly sixty-five years old, who had in his career won ninety-nine championship matches and was to have one try at winning his hundredth. This most retiring of champions has had, I suppose, as much devoted adoration as any player that ever lived and on this day the Hoylake air was heavily charged with hero-worship.

There was one person for whom I felt thoroughly sorry and that was Mr. Ball's opponent, Mr. Abercrombie. He must have known that there was not a man, woman or child on the links who did not, in a friendly way, wish him and his ball at the bottom of the deepest bunker in all Hoylake. I must say he bore it manfully. He is a good player and he played his game, and he won the match. Mr. Ball had said to a friend the night before that he thought he should he all right if only he could drive. By the irony of fate he was beaten because he could not hole the short putts. On the second green he had a very short one to win the hole. He went at it as if he wanted to get it over quickly and he missed it. He missed several more afterwards. He had a weakness in that direction in his prime hut then he could and did atone for it by some tremendous thrust. With the years the thrust has naturally departed. Mr. Ball lost the match on the sixteenth green and he had then missed four putts which could he called quite short. There are always "ifs" in a golf match hut this was a tragic "if".

If only he had not missed them!

The rest of his game was really a liberal education to the watchers. He swung his club as easily and gracefully and truly as a boy and if he had, as was natural, lost much length yet now and again he came out of his shell. The fourteenth hole is 490 yards long and Mr. Ball was five yards past the pin in two shots. The ground was hard and the breeze favouring,but still!

There were some eminently characteristic shots of his. At the second hole for instance, there is a cross-bunker close in front of the hole. Other people have to take mashieniblicks or "spade" mashies and then they cannot make the ball stop. Mr. Ball, in some incredible way of his own, used to play this stroke with a rather straight faced iron. He did it again now and the ball stopped as if tethered by a string.

The hole that I particularly wanted to see him play was the fourth which is called the "Cop". It is a one-shot hole and with the wind blowing from right to left it is intensely difficult to keep the ball near the hole. Ordinary mortals either hold it up too much and are bunkered on the right or fail to hold it up at all so that it bounds far over on the left. Years ago Mr. Ball was asked how to play this shot and answered, "Well, you pull it and slice it". The wind was blowing just as it should on this day: Mr. Abercrombie duly did what ordinary mortals do and went over on the left; Mr. Ball's shot cleft the wind like an arrow, almost shaved the flag-stick and finished eight yards past the pin. Ami then he took three putts—but no matter, the old shot had been played once more and in the grand manner.