The article:
THE GOLF CLUB
The New Club Starts with
Fifty Members
THE COURSE LAID OUT WITH NINE
HOLES – MORE THAN A MILE AROUND –
FINE NATURAL HAZARDS – A BURN
AND A DYKE AND A GOOD STEEP HILL –
SEVERAL OF THE MEMBERS WERE
PLAYING ON MONDAY
Poughkeepsie is now in line with recent civilization. We have a golf club, with a good size farm to range over, and a real Scotsman in command. The club organized Saturday evening with fifty-one members, and elected Mr. John E. Adriance president, with the following board of governors: Messrs. John E. Adriance, W.A. Adriance, Wm. H. Young, Hiram Wiltsie, Robert. M. Ferris and Dr. W.G. Dobson. One more remains to be chosen.
The Sloan Farm, where the links are located, is about fifteen minutes by trolley or bicycle from the court house. It may be recognized from the old-fashioned yellow-painted farm house near the road. The entrance is through a gate just north of the old house, and leads back to the barns and a new greenhouse devoted to violet culture. Not far from the greenhouse the visitor comes to the first “teeing ground,” the start of the golf course, and here he meets John Forman, the professional just over from Scotland, who is in charge of the links. The scenery is all one could wish, the green rolling hills and meadows of old Dutchess all around, the blue Catskills and Fishkills visible from many points, and the long line of river hills of Ulster, which resemble the hills of East Lothian in Scotland, as Forman says. The course is all staked out, the holes are in place, and men are working at clearing the dried leaves and the weeds off where they are likely to interfere with the sport. When the “putting greens” (the “u” must be pronounced as in “but” if you are going to play golf) have been rolled and cut short, everything will be in order. A Little house, once a tenant house on the farm, is undergoing revision and reroofing to serve as a club house. There isn’t enough room for a dance, but what golfer wants to dance. There’s enough room to partake of a “wee drop of Scotch” when one is tired from a long tramp around the links.
The drive for the first hole is off to the right, and across a “burn,” which is the pride of the course and a fine natural hazard. No bunker builders need apply so long as the “burn” and the “dyke” on the way to the second hole hold out. Don’t know what a “burn” is or a “dyke” or a “hazard” or even a “bunker”? Well, then there’s no use of your trying to play golf. These things are among the rudiments. A burn is nothing more than a little innocent stream of water, and it forms a “hazard” because it isn’t easy for a new player to drive his ball over it, and if the ball should light kersplash in the stream it would take sundry extra jabs at it with a “lofter” or a “cleek” to get it out, and every time you touch the ball it counts as a stroke against you. The object of the game, of course, you know, is to get around the links with a few strokes as possible. Before you drive the ball off first you “tee” it – that is, you squeeze up a little piece of dirt on the ground high enough to hold the ball an inch or so above the surrounding soil. Then you strike an attitude and swing your club back of your head, and take a look off in the direction of the next hole, which is several hundred yards away, and is marked by a little flag. Then you bring the club around with a tremendous swing, and if you are a good player, the ball spins away until it drops out of sight on the side of the hill across the “burn.” If you are a poor player, you probably strike the ground and break off the end of your driving club, while the ball rolls only a few feet.
You have made your drive and you can’t “tee” the ball up the next time, but must play the ball as it lies and you “canna make it lie just as you want it”. If it’s down in the grass you want a “lofter” to lift it out with, but generally a “cleek” will serve for the next stroke. After a time you will find the ball within a few yards of the hole, or on the putting green. You command your “caddy,” who has been carrying your clubs and laughing at your playing, to take the flag out of the hole, then you light your pipe and measure the distance with your eye, and if you ken how to play you may “putt” the ball in with not more than two strokes. Skill is an important element just here, but a man who hasn’t forgotten how he used to play “roley poley” with a base ball in his youth ought to make a fair hand at “putting” after a year or two of practice.
When the ball finally rests in the hole you announce the number of strokes it has taken you to get there, and your antagonist tells you [that] you have forgotten several of them. An appeal to the attendant caddies will perhaps settle the matter, and then you fish your ball out with your fingers (the only time you are allowed to touch it, except with one of the authorized sticks or clubs), and “tee” it again for the drive to the next hole, which on the Sloan place takes you over a “dyke,” another beautiful natural hazard, and lying right at the foot of a steep hill. A “dyke” is a plain, ordinary stone wall, built originally for the purpose of keeping cows out of a grain field, but now serving a much nobler purpose. If your ball lights in that stone wall – well, the writer hasn’t yet learned how it could be got out under the rules.
The course leads back in the country half a mile from the South Road and one of the drives on the return is at the top of a steep hill over both a dyke and a burn. If you don’t get drowned, or sprain your ankle, or smash all your clubs and lose your ball, you will in about an hour arrive at the “home hole,” near the start, tired but happy, and after a brief visit to the club house you are ready to start again.