THE SOLLYBODKINS
by SANDY HERD
from My Golfing Life, 1923
I BEGAN GOLF IN THE WAY THAT IS BEST FOR THE LIKES OF ME.
As a man climbs a hill or a ladder, I started at the bottom. EA en before being a caddie I was a"hare-fitted° golfer of the street, in the grey old city of St. Andrews, like "Andra" Kirkaldy before me, and others before us and since our day.
Golf found me "daft aboot it," as my mother used to say when I could not afford to buy clubs or balls. But I was not kept from playing on that account. Shinty sticks, cut from Strathyrum Woods, where Mr. Blackwood of the famous Edinburgh firm of publishers lived, and champagne corks served well enough to begin with. The corks were gathered from a refuse heap behind the Roval and Ancient Golf Club, for in those days I suppose champagne flowed more freely than now.
In proof that we laddies had something in our noddles, let me tell you how we made these corks carry against the wind, of which St. Andrews gets more than its share. The matter troubled us a long time, till at last we hit on the plan of inserting screw nails in the corks to give them weight. A local blacksmith put some in for us to start with.
Looking back on that boyish device now, I smile to think that we were the real pioneers of the cored ball. Great was our joy on discovering that it now became possible for us to drive nice long, low balls through the wind with our shinty sticks. Even today I rather think that is the best shot in my bag.
I remember that we gave the cork balls, with their screw--nail cores, the name of "sollybodkins." How we arrned at this name I cannot tell you now. Most likelr it was just a name that came to our lips, a pure inventtion of hoyhood....
Our links was the cobblv streets of St Andrews, with the lamp-posts for flags. My opponent and companion was Laurence Auchterlomie, destined, like myself, to be a champion in his day. Laurie went to America afterwards, and won the Open Championship there. Returning to St. Andrews, he took to teaching the young idea, and the old idea, too, how to drive.
I have always held to the opinion that the real reason whv the professional is able to more than hold his own against the amateur ,who often plays quite as much and perhaps more, is that the professional has behind him the advantages of the caddie's upbringing.
This means much. Golf is a game with such possibilities that there is little chance of a championship for the playerr, professional or amateur, who does not begin in his teens. If earlier still, as in in my case, all the better. It is never too soon to start golf, and, in another sense, it is never too late either.
"I Suppose, Herd, You were reared with a 'spoon' in your cradle," said a well-known amateur to me at Coomhe Hill, when I had a played a succession of my favourite shots to the green with the spoon. He was not far wrong, for I hardly remember anything earlier in my life than those "bare-fitted" golf matches with sticks and corks at the cathedral end of North Street.