Читать книгу Fore! - Charles E. Van Loan - Страница 4

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There has been considerable argument about it—even a mention of ethics—though where ethics figures in this case is more than I know. I'd like to take a flat-footed stance as claiming that the end justified the means. Saint George killed the Dragon, and Hercules mopped up the Augean stables, but little Wally Wallace—one hundred and forty-two pounds in his summer underwear—did a bigger job and a better job when the betting was odds-on-and-write-your-own-ticket that it couldn't be done. I wouldn't mind heading a subscription to present him with a gold medal about the size of a soup plate, inscribed as follows, to wit and viz.:

W. W. Wallace—He Put the Fore in Foursome.

Every golfer who ever conceded himself a two-foot putt because he was afraid he might miss it has sweated and suffered and blasphemed in the wake of a slow foursome. All the clubs that I have ever seen—and I've travelled a bit—are cursed with at least one of these Creeping Pestilences which you observe mostly from the rear.

You're a golfer, of course, and you know the make-up of a slow foursome as well as I do: Four nice old gentlemen, prominent in business circles, church members, who remember it even when they top a tee shot, pillars of society, rich enough to be carried over the course in palanquins, but too proud to ride, too dignified to hurry, too meek to argue except among themselves, and too infernally selfish to stand aside and let the younger men go through. They take nine practice swings before hitting a shot, and then flub it disgracefully; they hold a prayer meeting on every putting green and a post-mortem on every tee, and a rheumatic snail could give them a flying start and beat them out in a fifty-yard dash. Know 'em? What golfer doesn't?

But nobody knows why it is that the four slowest players in every club always manage to hook up in a sort of permanent alliance. Nobody knows why they never stage their creeping contests on the off days when the course is clear. Nobody knows why they always pick the sunniest afternoons, when the locker room is full of young men dressing in a hurry. Nobody knows why they bolt their luncheons and scuttle out to the first tee, nor where that speed goes as soon as they drive and start down the course. Nobody knows why they refuse to walk any faster than a bogged mooley cow. Nobody knows why they never look behind them. Nobody knows why they never hear any one yell "Fore!" Nobody knows why they are so dead set against letting any one through.

Everybody knows the fatal effect of standing too long over the ball, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Everybody knows of the tee shots that are slopped and sliced and hooked; of the indecision caused by the long wait before playing the second; of the change of clubs when the first choice was the correct one; of the inevitable penalty exacted by loss of temper and mental poise. Everybody knows that a slow foursome gives the Recording Angel a busy afternoon, and leaves a sulphurous haze over an entire course. But the aged reprobates who are responsible for all this trouble—do they care how much grief and rage and bitterness simmers in their wake? You think they do? Think again. Golf and Business are the only games they have ever had time to learn, and one set of rules does for both. The rest of the world may go hang! Golf is a serious matter with these hoary offenders, and they manage to make it serious for everybody behind them—the fast-walking, quick-swinging fellows who are out for a sweat and a good time and lose both because the slow foursome blocks the way.

Yes, you recognise the thumb-nail sketch—it is the slow foursome which infests your course; the one which you find in front of you when you go visiting. You think that four men who are inconsiderate enough to ruin your day's sport and ruffle your temper ought to be disciplined, called up on the carpet, taken in hand by the Greens Committee. You think they are the worst ever—but wait! You are about to hear of the golfing renegades known as the Big Four, who used to sew us up twice a week as regularly as the days came round; you are about to hear of Elsberry J. Watlington, and Colonel Jim Peck, and Samuel Alexander Peebles, and W. Cotton Hamilton—world's champions in the Snail Stakes, undisputed holders of the Challenge Belt for Practice Swinging, and undefeated catch-as-catch-can loiterers on the Putting Green.

Six months ago we would have backed Watlington, Peck, Peebles and Hamilton against the wide world, bet dollars against your dimes and allowed you to select your own stakeholders, timekeepers and judges. That's how much confidence we had in the Big Four. They were without doubt and beyond argument the slowest and most exasperating quartette of obstructionists that ever laid their middle-aged stomachs behind the line of a putt.

Do I hear a faint murmur of dissent? Going a little strong, am I? All right, glad you mentioned it, because we may as well settle this question of supremacy here and now.

To save time, I will admit that your foursome is slower than Congress and more irritating than the Senate. Permit me to ask you one question: Going back over the years, can you recall a single instance when your slow foursome allowed you to play through?... A lost ball, was it?... Well, anyway, you got through them.... Thank you, and your answer puts you against the ropes. I will now knock you clear out of the ring with one well-directed statement of fact. Tie on your bonnet good and tight and listen to this: The Big Four held up our course for seven long and painful years, and during that period of time they never allowed any one to pass them, lost ball or no lost ball.

That stops you, eh? I rather thought it would. It stopped us twice a week.