Spirit of the links

290 THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS
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great deal of it, had to relearn it, and found even then
that it was not the same good game that he had been
bred up with
.
He now counsels all who are going
anywhere for a long holiday or anything of that kind,
on no account to go near a place where there is no
golf course
,
for the result will be that life will never
be the same again as regards its golf. " You never
play again," he says,
"
with the same confidence, the
same fearlessness
,
the same certainty that you can
control the ball and make it do what you tell it to do.
You may make something of the game afterwards,
but I am sure that you will lose immensely. You do
not play in the same instinctive way as before."
Men like Braid and Vardon would not say " Thank
you " for a month's holiday in which they could not
play golf regularly
,
despite the fact that they are
always playing. One recent winter Harry Vardon
was sent to Bournemouth for his health
,
and they
took good care to see that his clubs did not go with
him, and solemnly warned him that he must not play
there, for he might have been equal to borrowing
somebody else's clubs
.
Then he would write to
London in a most pathetic manner, saying, "They
won't let me have my clubs and play
,"
as if he were
being deprived of food and the necessaries of life.
There are some exceptions to this rule of continual
play that may be taken as proving it. There is the
case of Andrew Kirkaldy, who
,
after being second
for the Open Championship in 1879, went for to be a
soldier, was sent to Egypt, fought at Tel
-
el-Kebir
and other places, came back in 1886, and soon after-
wards tied for the Open Championship. Mr. Edward
Blackwell had two separate spells of farming in
California
,
each lasting about five years, during which