Boy, I can hardly keep up with this stuff, so let me catch up here, and since I don't know everyone's first name, excuse me for directing stuff to screen names.
P_Turner
One more thing on Brer Rabbit. Just as I'm convinced John Milton was the last man standing on the planet whose brain was filled with all the knowledge known at the time, I'm equally certain that Bernardo may have been the last man standing to have read all that was worth reading in his time. He sprinkled literary allusions all over the place the way I sprinkle my drives, irons, wedges and putts (even the gimmes); for him to have dropped Brer Rabbit into something would have been no differerent, really, than his mentioning Mr. Micawber or any of the Pickwick gang. It's just something he did. Also, since he didn't see himself by his own definition as a golfing rabbit -- see his essay "The Heart of a Rabbit," conveniently nestled for your reading pleasure on page 319 of "Bernard Darwin on Golf" which you're all slowly but surely helping move into Harry Potter sales territory -- I don't think he'd hide under that pseudonym. As I said earlier, Brer Fox would have been more his style, though, given a fox's slyness, maybe that hole isn't worth going down.
Steve --
Great question, and the answer is I don't really know. He doesn't talk about letter-writing in his memoirs or essays, but the Darwins were a letter-writing clan. In fact, I think it was in the teens that his aunt -- I think it was an aunt -- published a collection of family letters. That said, I can't imagine Darwin *not* being a prolific letter writer. He loved receiving mail at the Times and Country Life, and regularly began columns as responses to letters. He was also too polite not to answer his mail with something in return. Also, mail is how folks communicated back then, and with overseas friends like CB Mac, Francis Ouimet, and Grantland Rice, among others, spirited correspondence seems natural. Plus, I think the British postal system delivered the mail about 13,000 times a day back then, so notes sent in the morning were answered by the afternoon. Mail was a way of life. Like e-mail. Only without the spam.
BCrosby --
I think you'll find a little more architectural stuff in "Bernard Darwin on Golf," and Darwin does read better unadulterated. That said, I don't want anyone thinking that I've got anything but utter admiration for "The Classics of Golf" series. My own library would be much poorer without the volumes from the series I do have, and "Sketchbook" was one of the first Darwins I laid mitts on. It was a fine introduction that left me wanting more, and I set out to fill my book with more of the more that I wanted and less of the reports on match play and Darwin's old golfing heroes that I didn't. Anthologies are all about choices. I chose pieces on Hogan, Jones, Sarazen and Ouimet rather than Braid, Young Tom, Ball and Tait because those were the pieces I preferred reading. Since you know you won't be satisfying everyone in these things, the least you can do is satisfy yourself.
A_Clay_Man --
The course is a trip, isn't it? Unfortunately, SI cut out my favorite fact. Back in the '20s, when Jackson Park was a 27-hole layout, it was the O'Hare of loops, the busiest course in the world with -- don't hold me to the exact number -- some 256,000 rounds a year. That's right. 256K. What a way to save on maintenance costs. Mowing? Sheep? No grass is growing under all those footsteps, anyway.