Bernard Darwin on Golf
434Bernard Darwin on Golf
434Paperback(Edited and with a new preface by Jeff Silverman)
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Overview
KBernard Darwin could have easily embraced a privileged life as a respected lawyer, given his conventional upbringing and prestigious lineage as the grandson of Charles Darwin. However, he veered off this path to pursue his true passion: golf. Despite his notable skills on the links—having captained his golf team at Cambridge and reached the semifinals of the British Amateur Championships twice—Darwin found greater acclaim with his pen than with his club.
Initially, Darwin served as a weekly columnist for The Times of London, always signing his columns "Our Golf Correspondent." He swiftly rose to prominence as one of Britain's finest essayists, transcending the mere reporting of events to offer profound insights into the sport. His contributions extended beyond The Times, as he became a regular fixture in publications such as Country Life and a frequent contributor to The Atlantic Monthly.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781493084258 |
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Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
Publication date: | 09/03/2024 |
Edition description: | Edited and with a new preface by Jeff Silverman |
Pages: | 434 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
JEFF SILVERMAN, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, and Golf World. His several club histories include Merion: The Championship Story, which received the USGA’s Herbert Warren Wind Award in 2013. He is also the editor of The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told, Lardner on Baseball, The Greatest Golf Stories Ever Told, The Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told, and Great American Golf Stories. He lives with his family in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Read an Excerpt
Bernard Darwin On Golf
By Darwin, Bernard
The Lyons Press
Copyright © 2004 Darwin, BernardAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9781592286287
"The People in Front"
from Playing the Like
1934
Hazlitt thought it one of the best things in life to be known only as "the gentleman in the parlor," and certainly it is a pleasant title. There is something so respectable about its anonymity, and yet it suggests all the romance of wayfaring. Other titles formed on somewhat similar lines suggest nothing but feelings of hatred and contempt. Such is that of the large class of golfers whom we call simply "the people in front." When the clocks have been put back and darkness falls prematurely on the links, they are more than ever detestable.
It is true that they are not, as a rule, in the least to blame for the delay; so much we grudgingly admit, but it does not make their little ways the less irritating. They waggle for hours; they stroll rather than walk; they dive into their monstrous bags in search of the right club and then it is the wrong number, but they are not sorry that we have been troubled; their putting is a kind of funereal ping-pong. We could forgive them all these tricks, from which we ourselves are conspicuously free, if it were not for the absurd punctilio with which they observe the rules. They will insist on waiting for the people in front of them when it must be palpable even to their intellects that the best shot they ever hit in their lives would be fifty yards short.
The one thing to be said for them is thatwhen they are in front of somebody else they can give us a little malicious gaiety. Some while ago I was playing on the same course as was an eminent person. My partner and I started in front of him, but others of our party were less fortunate. For some time we could not quite understand why there were several empty fairways behind us. Then we noticed that on the tees couples were rapidly silting up. It was as if a river had flowed placidly on until there was thrown a mighty dam right across it. As in our old friend, "Horatius,"
The furious river struggled hard
And tossed his tawny mane,
but the dam held; in front, steadily, methodically on went the eminent person, studying both ends of his putts with all that intense power of forgetting for the moment the affairs of State which is the hallmark of his class. And I am bound to confess that we laughed, like Mr. Manzalini, "demnably."
Generally, as was said before, the people in front are not the real culprits. "I know it's not their fault," we say in the tone of the man who, as he broke his putter across his knee, exclaimed, "I know it's only a d--d game." That being so, it ought to make no difference to us who are the people for whom we have to wait. We should go no faster and no slower if Bobby Jones and Harry Vardon were playing in front of us instead of that old lady who scoops the ball along with a club that goes up so obviously faster than it can ever come down. I suppose we must be golfing snobs, because it does make a great difference. To be kept waiting by the eminent (I mean the eminent in golf) is to be reconciled to the inevitability of things, whereas we always believe that the scooping lady could get along faster if she tried. Moreover, there is the disquieting hope that she may lose her ball. It would be of no real help to us if she did, but instinct is too strong for us. Every time her ball is seen heading for a gorse bush our heartfelt prayers go with it, and though attainment will swiftly prove disenchanting, it is a great moment when at last she waves us on and we stampede courteously past.
It is at that precise moment that we are most likely to hit our own ball into a gorse bush, for it is a law of nature that everybody plays a hole badly when going through. To be there and then repassed is one of the bitterest humiliations that golf can bring; it must be akin to that of being rebumped by the boat so gloriously bumped the night before. But, of course, no rational being will endure it; far rather would we surrender the hole and make a rapid though undignified rush towards the next teeing ground. By this time, it is true, we are hot, flustered, and angry, and wish that the woman had kept her ball on the course. Nevertheless, we shall soon be wishing that the new people in front will lose theirs. What fools we are! and in nothing more foolish than in this matter of passing.
My original list by no means exhausted the crimes that can be committed by the people in front. They can call us on and then, finding their ball in the nick of time, go on themselves, but that is an offense so black and repulsive that I cannot write about it. They can try over again the putt they have just missed, and this crime has become more fashionable since we have been taught to admire American assiduity in the practicing of putts. They can take out a horrid little card and pencil, and, immobile in the middle of the green, write down their horrid little score. In that case, however, there is compensation, for there is no law of God or man that can prevent us from letting out a blaring yell of "Fore!" To see them duck and cower beneath the imaginary assault may not be much, but it is something. They may think us ill-mannered, but what does that matter? The worst they can do is write an article about the people behind.
Continues...
Excerpted from Bernard Darwin On Golf by Darwin, Bernard Copyright © 2004 by Darwin, Bernard. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction | ix | |
I | On Himself | |
On Being a Darwin | 5 | |
My Earliest Golfing Days | 15 | |
My First Open | 19 | |
A Second Visit to America | 23 | |
Confessions of a Practicer | 33 | |
A Golf Writer's Revenge | 37 | |
II | The Spirit of the Game | |
Golfing Reveries | 43 | |
The Sounds of Golf | 47 | |
The Humor of It | 51 | |
The People in Front | 55 | |
On Being Dormy | 59 | |
Down Memory Lane | 63 | |
Golf as a Soporific | 67 | |
Lovelock's Mile | 71 | |
Crime or Folly | 75 | |
Bad Useful Golf | 79 | |
Absit Omen | 83 | |
Silence Is Golden | 87 | |
The Golfer and the Crossword | 91 | |
The Golfer's Cigarette | 95 | |
A Fresh Start | 99 | |
The Black Flag | 103 | |
Mixed Foursomes | 107 | |
The Dissembling Golfer | 111 | |
The Pampered Golfer | 115 | |
Providence and Politeness | 119 | |
Card and Pencil Golf | 125 | |
III | Faults, Fixes, and the Tools of the Trade | |
"A Little Too Much Massy" | 131 | |
Go to the Best Doctor | 135 | |
A Musical Cure | 139 | |
To Underclub or Overclub | 143 | |
The Terrible Choice | 147 | |
The Knot in the Handkerchief | 151 | |
Cures and Cathedrals | 155 | |
Nine Inches | 159 | |
The Rebirth of a Golfer | 163 | |
Aces of Clubs | 167 | |
Black or Silver | 171 | |
Alien Clubs | 177 | |
The Ball That Cannot Be Sliced | 183 | |
The Winds of Heaven | 187 | |
The Ladies | 191 | |
IV | The Players, Ridiculous and Sublime | |
The Happy Golfer | 197 | |
Portrait of a High-Handicap Golfer | 201 | |
Francis | 207 | |
The Man from Titusville | 211 | |
Ghastly, Horrible, but True | 217 | |
The Immortal Bobby | 223 | |
The Small Colossus: Hogan at Carnoustie | 239 | |
Hydes and Jekylls | 243 | |
V | A Golfer's Almanac | |
New Year's Eve Cheer | 249 | |
Stripping For Action | 251 | |
Out-Of-Season Joys | 255 | |
The Golfless Holiday | 261 | |
The Evening Round | 265 | |
Stormy Weather | 269 | |
Autumn Comes | 273 | |
A Mid-Winter Night's Dream | 277 | |
The Frozen Player | 281 | |
A Christmas Story | 285 | |
Nailed Shoes Over Waterloo Bridge | 289 | |
A Christmas Sermon | 293 | |
The Last Round | 297 | |
VI | Fields of Play | |
Architectooralooral | 303 | |
In the Rough | 315 | |
The Heart of a Rabbit | 319 | |
Aberdovey | 323 | |
The Links of Eiderdown | 333 | |
St. Andrews in August | 337 | |
Muirfield in Winter | 341 | |
The Old Course | 345 | |
VII | Crossing the Pond: The Atlantic Monthly Dispatches | |
The Golfer's Emotions | 353 | |
The Perils of Golf | 365 | |
Bad Manners in Golf | 375 | |
The Ailing Golfer | 387 | |
Golf in a High Wind | 397 | |
VIII | Valedictory | |
Giving Up the Game | 407 |