Side Lights
SIDE LIGHTS By JAMES RUNCIMAN _WITH MEMOIR BY GRANT ALLEN, AND INTRODUCTION BY W.T. STEAD. EDITED BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN_ London T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCXCIII CONTENTS.
I do not mean to infer that the slow or deliberate person will not make
a good player, but with deliberation he must have that keen interest
which dominates all of his faculties.
Marshall, for instance, is the slowest player I ever saw, and one of the
best. It is tiresome to watch him prepare to make a shot. He averages
four practise strokes. He has become so addicted to the practise-stroke
habit that he makes a series of preliminary manoeuvres before carving a
steak, and he raises his glass and sets it down several times before
taking a drink. His game is the sublimation of caution. It is the
brilliancy of care.
Later in the afternoon I wandered down the old lane which bisects the
links and climbed "The Eagle's Nest," a jagged pile of rocks which rise
on the southeastern part of the course. When a boy I discovered a way to
reach the crest of the higher ledge, fully two hundred feet above the
brook which takes its rambling course to the west. At this altitude
there is a natural seat, so formed by the rocks that those below cannot
see the one who uses this as a sentinel box.
It suited my mood to climb there this afternoon. Lazily smoking a cigar
I drank in the pastoral panorama spread out before me. The old Sumner
road wound as a dusty-gray ribbon amid fields of grain and corn. Below
were the pigmy figures of golfers, grotesque in their insignificance,
striding along like abbreviated compasses.
SIDE LIGHTS By JAMES RUNCIMAN _WITH MEMOIR BY GRANT ALLEN, AND INTRODUCTION BY W.T. STEAD. EDITED BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN_ London T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCXCIII CONTENTS.