Joyce Wethered
Extacted from From THE LADIES, GOLF BETWEEN TWO WARS by Bernard Darwin
Publihed by Chatto & Windus, London 1944
And then, "a strange thing happened". The English Championship was in 1920 played at Sheringham and thither came Miss Leitch fresh from her triumph in Ireland. Perhaps she was not in fact so very fresh but rather tired. However that may be, she crashed her way through to the final. There her adversary was a young lady who had only just made good her place at the bottom of the Surrey side, and had qualified with two strictly moderate scores. She was chiefly known, as far as she was known at all, as Roger Wethered's sister, but she had played very well in this tournament and beaten some strong opponents. I do not suppose that the young lady herself or anyone else thought she had much chance. They thought so less when she was four down at lunch, less still when she played the first two holes in the afternoon very badly and lost them both. Then in the desperate situation of six down with sixteen to play, she unmasked her batteries. Holes seldom melt away "like snow off a dyke" unless the leader does something to help them, and I have no doubt-I was not there-that Miss Leitch made mistakes, but Miss Wethered not only took advantage of them, but put in some fierce thrusts on her own account, such as three threes in a row, two of them not countenanced by Par or Bogey. The holes changed hands so quickly that Miss Wethered was one up with four to play. Miss Leitch rallied to win the fifteenth, but her opponent placidly ran through a bunker at the next and rubbed it in by holing a putt. She likewise won the seventeenth and with it an astonishing match by two up and one to play. It was by the way near the seventeenth green that there first appeared the traditional railway train which puffed and snorted loudly as Miss Wethered putted and of which she was so entirely unaware, that, on being congratulated on her, imperturbability, she is alleged to have asked, "What tr4in?" It has appeared several times since in various versions of the story and I myself incline to place it at Troon. Miss Wethered herself could naturally not give evidence. Miss Leitch herself assigns it to Sheringham and she ought to know. It may be a ghost train that haunts all the links on which the Champion played, but let Sheringham at least have its due!
The new Champion had not yet attained to the full stature of her game nor come into her kingdom. Miss Leitch was : destined to reduce her to a proper state of subjection in the following year, but from this match at Sheringham onwards a meeting between the two was that to which the general public looked forward, so that it dwarfed rather unfairly perhaps the doings of all the other excellent lady players. Therefore this is perhaps as good a time as another to try to appraise the most remarkable lady player who has yet appeared, one as outstanding and memorable in her own realm as Bobby Jones in his. Neither she nor Miss Leitch won as many Championships as they were capable of winning. Miss Leitch was in all probability deprived of her full share by the act of the Germans and Miss Wethered by her own act. She went on winning the English Championship till 1924, when she retired sated. She won the Ladies' Championship three times in four years between 1922 and 1924 and then abdicated from the throne till 1929 when a Championship at St. Andrews tempted her back for one more victory. After that she gave a single public performance a year in the Mixed Foursomes at Worplesdon when she showed a kindly catholic taste in partners and generally pulled them through.
What is there new and true to say about Miss Wethered's methods? I really do not know. I should pitch on the qualities, which are perhaps complementary to one another, crispness of hitting and economy of movement. As for the latter she originally stood so still that her left heel stayed glued to the ground, but later she eased it a little, with gain, I think, both in grace and power. This economy of movement was to some extent delusive. She had in fact plenty of body turn, but it was done so quietly and naturally as not to be very noticeable. As a result I believe that when she went to stay and play at one place where she had never been seen before, the reverent ladies who watched decided in awe-stricken conclave that "Miss Wethered did not pivot". They remodelled their own swings accordingly, with catastrophic effect. Another quality of Miss Wethered's methods was what for lack of a better word I will call its uniformity. There were days, as there must be with anyone, when she seemed to swing a little faster than others, but generally she stuck to a uniform unhurried and rhythmic pace with a consistency that very few other golfers have equalled. Perhaps this accounted for her accuracy, for she was hideously accurate if one were her opponent, blessedly so if her partner. If ever she did go at all crooked her ball seemed to have a knack of keeping just out of the bunker, and indeed even to skirt one was a rare error. It was part of the fun of watching her at Worplesdon that she was to be seen, through the agency of her male partner, in places where she would never have gone on her own account. It was one of the agitating features of being her partner that one was sure to put her there. If I add that she had an admirable temperament, keen, strung up by the great occasion to exactly the right degree, capable of seeing the humour of the most lamentable situation and having a power of pegging away and hoping for things to come round, I have done with eulogy and will come back to history.
The Ladies' Championship of 1924 at Turnberry, which I had the pleasure of watching, was a memorable one, with Miss Leitch the outstanding figure. In the very first round she had to meet Miss Alexa Stirling, a beautiful player, then American Champion, bred at Atlanta, Georgia, where Bobby Jones comes from, and more or less a contemporary of his. It was hard that these two should meet so soon.
One of us two, Herminius,
Shall never more go home.
I will lay on for Tusculum,
And lay thou on for Rome.
That was the thought in everybody's mind. It was one of those matches that produce before hand a breathless hush. `Breathless' is perhaps hardly the word, for the wind roared and swept before it across the links a storm of rain. I cannot remember watching on a more unpleasant day, and when at last at a late hour I had completed my account of the match on partially sopped pieces of paper it never reached London. Yet as a spectacle it was well worth the wetting. Everybody felt, that it was particularly cruel weather for Miss Stirling, and this was perhaps hospitable rather than logical. There was then an impression that American golfers were not at their best in bad weather. This is a complete delusion and some of the most astonishing golf I ever saw was played by American amateurs in appalling rain at the Country Club in 1922.
Themselves soaked to the skin, their club handles dripping sops, the greens covered with rivers in miniature, they did scores that would have been remarkable in perfect condition; Miss Stirling did not blench; she played well but Miss Leitch was in an irresistible mood. I have a vision of her with he familiar bandeau and some sort of handkerchief knotted round her neck affronting the tempest, revelling in her defiance of it. The wide stance, the little duck of the right knee the follow-through that sends 'the club through low as i boring its way through the wind-all the characteristic movements stand out in memory against the grey and lowering background. Think of Madame Defarge leading the women of St. Antoine against the Bastille, think of anything frightfully grand, and you have a picture of Miss Leitch in that match.
Precisely the number of holes by which she won I do no remember and I do not propose to look it up and so spoil my own imaginary picture by superfluous details. Enough that it was by a satisfying margin; and that the invading menace was removed. Not altogether removed because in a late round Miss Marion Hollins, large, strong and cheerful, was only beaten by her at the last hole, but that seemed comparatively unimportant. Meanwhile Miss Wethered was going through in the other half comfortably enough and the two duly met in the final. Miss Wethered played unworthily in the first round. She had, as I remember it, been a little inclined during the previous day to cut her shots, and this she could not afford to do against Miss Leitch. She was out-hit and generally outplayed and was seven down at lunch. No second marvel of Sheringham was vouchsafed: she played up well in the afternoon but her adversary was not letting go and won by 4 and 3, her third successive Championship.
I did not see the Championship in the following year a Prince's, Sandwich, when the draw was again kind, so that the pair met in the final. Miss Wethered had perceptibly strengthened her game by this time, and after a hard struggle to begin with there came a rapid landslide of holes and she won by 9 and 7. Neither was I at Burnham in the following year, since the Ladies' Championship there and the Amateur Championship at Deal took place at the same time. Miss Wethered looked like winning again till in the semi-final she was beaten by a beautiful golfer, lacking nothing but a little power, Mrs. Macbeth, who as Miss Muriel Dodd had been the Champion of 1913. If Miss Wethered had watched the next day's final it would have been the only round in any Championship during her career she ever could have watched as a spectator and not a player. In every other one she reached the final. As it was she did not see it, because she travelled through the night to see her brother win at Deal. It was between two of the three great Cheshire ladies, Mrs. Macbeth and Miss Doris Chambers, and Miss Chambers, doing for once full justice to her fine natural powers, won the match.
In 1924 Miss Wethered won again at Portrush. Next year, 1925, saw the fourth and last final between the two dominating figures, this time at Troon, and it was the best of all. It ended on the thirty-seventh green and everyone felt that it was a great pity that the Championship could not be halved and the throne shared for the ensuing year. From the start of the Championship Miss Wethered was clinging to fours and killing her enemies stone dead. There was one big match on the way to the final against that fine American player Miss Glenna Collett (now Mrs. Vare). Miss Collett held her own for a while, but the fours came too consistently at last and the wave passed over her head as it had over all the rest. Meanwhile Miss Leitch was only fighting her way through, as it were by desperate charges at the point of the bayonet. She was full of courage but not full of golf; that blessed confidence that can make the game seem an easy one would not come to her. Several people had a chance of beating her and were perhaps too frightened of their own audacity to administer the coup de grace. So Miss Leitch was in the final at last, but this time there was no general expectation that she could hold her adversary.
The morning, however, saw a complete change in her. The painful ascent to the summit had been laboriously achieved and she emerged on the heights a different golfer. Confidence, dash, rhythm-all had come back, and from the very start she attacked. Miss Wethered was still playing well, not quite so victoriously well as she had been, but even the very best can have their game to some extent dictated to them by their opponents' and only play as well as they are allowed. So after ten holes Miss Leitch was quite deservedly though surprisingly three up. She continued to play fine golf, but she could not help losing a little ground to her enemy's great counter-attack. Miss Wethered came home in 35, finish with a long putt and the match was square.
The more sanguine of Miss Wethered's supporters believed that now she would draw steadily away, but Miss Leitch was "not so tamed" and a grim struggle all the way out saw her one up going to the ninth. Here Miss Wethered had a putt win but was stymied. She decided to put it to the touch and risk two down; she went out for the shot and lofted it. A risk thus taken and successfully overcome is seldom without effect and now Miss Wethered did forge ahead, though very slowly. Going to the long sixteenth hole she was two up a had hit two good shots, while her adversary was more or less doomed to take six. Thus she had an iron shot, such as she had been playing perfectly, to reach the green and win the match. "She had only to hit a straight iron shot," as some writers are a little too apt to say, forgetting how much easier these things are for the people who have not got to do them. Perhaps Miss Wethered herself became conscious of how apparently little separated her from victory. At any rate she hooked her ball into some hummocks to the left and the hole was halved in six. That too had its effect, as a let-off does. Miss Wethered played two rather weak holes; Miss Leitch took her chance, won them both and halved the match. That, as I said, ought to have been the end and both players had palpably had all they wanted, but the law is inexorable and out they had to go again with a mighty crowd lining the course all the way to the first hole. Miss Wethered reached the edge of the green with her second and then laid a very long putt stone dead. A very fine putt it was but there are occasions when the extra holes, however many there are of them and however well they may be played, give a feeling of anticlimax and this was one of them.
Miss Wethered now retired for a while to the avocations her private life and in 1926, at Harlech, Miss Leitch won again, for the fourth and last time, beating Mrs. Garon, once a Girl Champion, a very neat, correct, graceful player, but hardly carrying enough guns for such an adversary. And now with her there come new names in the list and a slightly different generation begins to arrive at the top. For two years in succession the triumph that Arnaud Massy had achieved at Hoylake in 1907 was repeated by the two young ladies of France, Mademoiselle Simone de la Chaume and Mademoiselle Le Blan. I saw neither championship but I have had the pleasure of meeting and watching both these ladies at Worplesdon. Mademoiselle Le Blan's was, I suppose, rather a surprising win though a well-deserved one. She was a long hitter, dashing rather than consistent. Mademoiselle de la Chaume on the other hand was soundness itself with a very true swing of the club and an obvious knowledge of golf, the product both of a natural turn for games, and of good teaching and hard work. She came at one time regularly to Worplesdon, one of the most welcome of all its visitors, and to Worplesdon I shall, if I know myself, return later.
With 1929 we come back once more to Miss Wethered unable to resist the lure of St. Andrews and with her return the great heart of the general public was once more stirred to its depths by ladies' golf. The authorities, who thought that in some minor match in an early round she could be left more or less to her own devices, were rudely awakened. Wherever she was the crowd went surging and there was one match which would almost have come to an untimely end had not Colonel Dalrymple-Hamilton, by a noble exhibition of shouting and his genius for discipline, cowed the onlookers into a state of order. She was playing as well as ever and her progress to the final was a triumphal procession. Then she met Miss Glenna Collett and there ensued a really historic' battle, fit to be compared with that of Troon.
It was like the Troon final in several ways. First of all everybody knew that Miss Collett was a very good player but hardly anybody thought that she could hold her opponent over thirty-six holes. Then she not only held her but gained at one time a considerable lead, so that all but the most faithful and fanatical became considerably alarmed. Again after Miss Wethered had made her spurt and got all the holes back and more also, Miss Collett put in so fierce a counter-spurt that it seemed at one time that an incredible thing, in other words the defeat of the favourite, might possibly happen. It did not happen and Miss Wethered stopped the rot and pulled through but there has seldom been a more "damned nice thing."
Miss Collett was and no doubt still is, as Mrs. Vare, a very good player indeed with a rhythmic, well-taught American swing, very orthodox except for an idiosyncratic movement of the left foot which seemed to give an odd flicker-it is the only way I can describe it-at the top of the swing. She lost nothing in length of driving to Miss Wethered and in every other department of the game, especially in putting, she began, if the expression be allowable, by outplaying her. She -holed some cruel putts, she did everything well and nothing ill, and she was five up at the turn with a score of 34 or so. She was, as I recollect, very nearly six up but not quite, and then she failed at a putt on the twelfth green and slowly the holes began to come back. Three of them had come back by lunch-time and there was a general impression to the effect, "It's all right now. You'll see. Joyce will win comfortably." Win she did but not comfortably. To the turn she went steadily away to become four up, but just when people were beginning to be sorry for her Miss Collett attacked with magnificent ferocity. Back came the holes the other way and not till Miss Wethered holed an invaluable putt for a half on the fifteenth green was real confidence restored. She won in the end by 3 and 1 and policemen cleared a road home for two heroines.
There "in the glory of the sunset" Miss Wethered, save for Worplesdon, vanishes for good and all, and if I have devoted a disproportionate space to her and her great competitor, it is out of no disrespect to their successors, but because they were in their very different ways dominating players such as only arrive at intervals in any game.