Wodehouse on the National Golf Links of America

[Ronald Montesano]

And doth I quote, from the preface to The Heart of a Goof:


...I have spent much time recently playing on the National Links at Southampton, Long Island, U.S.A. These links were constructed by an exiled Scot who conceived the dreadful idea of assembling all the really foul holes in Great Britain. It cannot but leave its mark on a man when, after struggling through the Sahara at Sandwich and the Alps at Prestwick, he finds himself faced by the Station-Master's Garden hole at St. Andrew's and knows that the Redan and the Eden are just round the corner.

The purported scribe continues


When you turn in a medal score of a hundred and eight on two successive days, you get to know something about Life.

In case, however, you question his mettle under the most excruciating of trial circumstances, he confesses in the end, on the occasion of his tournament victory in Aiken, South Carolina


...I went through a field consisting of some of the fattest retired business-men in America like a devouring flame...

Eschew as he does the common comma, he can be forgiven.

[Niall C]

Ronald

If asked I'd normally say that Darwin is the finest writer on golf there has been but surely no one has been better than Wodehouse in tapping into the humour inherent in grown ups trying to hit small object round a field to various degrees of success. People usually reference the butterfly's in the adjoining meadow but I always recall the description of players zig-zagging up the fairway. Unfortunately my dodgy memory doesn't allow me to remember the passage properly. I'll need to dig it out.......

Niall