American Contrasts (1922)
by Bernard Darwin
First published Country Life 1922
I was watching at Brookline the final of the American championship between Mr Jesse Sweetser and Mr Chick Evans. The next golf that I saw, some eleven days later, was in the final of the Girls' championship at Stoke Poges between Miss Muriel Wickenden and Miss Barbara Griffiths. The contrast was a vivid one, and has made me try to set down some of the differences between golf in the two countries.
Both these young ladies have the makings of fine golfers and can play a great deal better then they did in that final. If they played some very bad strokes, they also played some good and gallant ones, strokes that would have roused an American crowd to frenzied applause; but - here was the first contrast - the gallery at Stoke remained entirely placid. Only once was there a mild demonstration, when one of the players after a severe struggle just extracted herself from a deep bunker. On that occasion a sardonic spectator remarked, `I wonder which they are clapping, the lady or the bunker, because it seems to me the bunker had the best of it.'
The habit of clapping at golf matches has greatly increased in this country during the last few years but we still lag far behind in that respect, and I confess to hoping that we may continue to do so. Another contrast is that, apart from the state of the match, whether his own or somebody else's, the American golfer takes a tremendous interest in the score. We have been brought up to think this is in a match rather tiresome and, personally, I am too old to change my views. The fact that in a four-ball match in America everybody is inclined to hole out, whether or not his score has any effect on the match, makes for a slow progress round the course. Nevertheless, I believe that this habit, though it might not suit us, improves the average American golfer's play. By reason of it he never gets slack, he is always trying, so that trying becomes a second nature; he is continually interested and amused and ambitious and has a genuine standard by which to judge his improvement or deterioration.
These two contrasts are matters of temperament. Now I come to one of another sort which is very striking. I never fully realised till I was in America this time what a difference wind makes in the game. The vast majority of American golfers play upon sheltered inland courses. They have very little wind, and as to playing in a real seaside gale, many a good sound player there does not begin to imagine it. In addition to this, the greens are not cut very short for fear of the burning sun, and they are regularly watered. Consequently the play up to the hole appears to British eyes a little monotonous and in a sense artificial. Nearly all the greens are closely bunkered, and in any case the grassy turf does not lend itself to the running shot, so that the approach is nearly always a high pitching stroke, of varying lengths of course, right up to the holeside.
There is a certain sameness about this stroke and I hasten to add, there is, to their opponents, an admirable and alarming sameness about the way in which the Americans play it. They are quite wonderfully straight and accurate. Most of them use to some extent the ribbed clubs, which here are barred and now and again they gain by doing so. I shall never forget one shot played by my opponent in the International match - a pitch, if anything downwind, on to a tiny little plateau, which made the ball stop literally within two feet. Generally speaking, however, with the greens slow and soft, a high shot with an ordinary club will stop the ball quite quickly enough. This high shot many good American golfers play in a manner that we have always been taught to
American Contrasts (r922) I was watching at Brookline the final of the American championship between Mr Jesse Sweetser and Mr Chick Evans. The next golf that I saw, some eleven days later, was in the final of the Girls' championship at Stoke Poges between Miss Muriel Wickenden and Miss Barbara Griffiths. The contrast was a vivid one, and has made me try to set down some of the differences between golf in the two countries. Both these young ladies have the makings of fine golfers and can play a great deal better then they did in that final. If they played some very bad strokes, they also played some good and gallant ones, strokes that would have roused an American crowd to frenzied applause; but - here was the first contrast - the gallery at Stoke remained entirely placid. Only once was there a mild demonstration, when one of the players after a severe struggle just extracted herself from a deep bunker. On that occasion a sardonic spectator remarked, `I wonder which they are clapping, the lady or the bunker, because it seems to me the bunker had the best of it.' The habit of clapping at golf matches has greatly increased in this country during the last few years but we still lag far behind in that respect, and I confess to hoping that we may continue to do so. Another contrast is that, apart from the state of the match, whether his own or somebody else's, the American golfer takes a tremendous interest in the score. We have been brought up to think this is in a match rather tiresome and, personally, I am too old to change my views. The fact that in a four-ball match in America everybody is inclined to hole out, whether or not his score has any effect on the match, makes for a slow progress round the course. Nevertheless, I believe that this habit, though it might not suit us, improves the average American golfer's play. By reason of it he never gets slack, he is always trying, so that trying becomes a second nature; he is continually interested and amused and ambitious and has a genuine standard by which to judge his improvement or deterioration.
These two contrasts are matters of temperament. Now I come to one of another sort which is very striking. I never fully realised till I was in America this time what a difference wind makes in the game. The vast majority of American golfers play upon sheltered inland courses. They have very little wind, and as to playing in a real seaside gale, many a good sound player there does not begin to imagine it. In addition to this, the greens are not cut very short for fear of the burning sun, and they are regularly watered. Consequently the play up to the hole appears to British eyes a little monotonous and in a sense artificial. Nearly all the greens are closely bunkered, and in any case the grassy turf does not lend itself to the running shot, so that the approach is nearly always a high pitching stroke, of varying lengths of course, right up to the holeside.
There is a certain sameness about this stroke and I hasten to add, there is, to their opponents, an admirable and alarming sameness about the way in which the Americans play it. They are quite wonderfully straight and accurate. Most of them use to some extent the ribbed clubs, which here are barred and now and again they gain by doing so. I shall never forget one shot played by my opponent in the International match - a pitch, if anything downwind, on to a tiny little plateau, which made the ball stop literally within two feet. Generally speaking, however, with the greens slow and soft, a high shot with an ordinary club will stop the ball quite quickly enough. This high shot many good American golfers play in a manner that we have always been taught to