time it is heavy odds on the philosopher winning the hole. There are two
respects in which he differs from his opponent at this crisis in his
golfing affairs. He does not become flurried, excited, and despondent,
and give the hole up for lost with a feeling of disgust that he had
committed the most unpardonable sin. He remembers that there are still
various strokes to be played before the hole is reached, and that it is
quite possible that in the meantime his friend may somewhere lose one
and enable him to get on level terms again. When two players with plus
handicaps are engaged in a match, a bunkered ball will generally mean a
lost hole, but others who have not climbed to this pinnacle of
excellence are far too pessimistic if they assume that this rule
operates in their case also. The second matter in which the philosophic
golfer rises superior to his less favoured brother when there is a
bunker stroke to be played, is that he fully realises that the bunker
was placed there for the particular purpose of catching certain
defective shots, and that the definite idea of its constructors was that
the man who played such a shot should lose a stroke as penalty for doing
so--every time. It is legitimate for us occasionally to put it to
ourselves that those constructors did not know the long limits of our
resource nor the craftiness we are able to display when in a very tight
corner, and that therefore, if we find a favourable opportunity, we may
cheat the bunker out of the stroke that it threatens to take from us.
But this does not happen often. When the golfer has brought himself to
realise that, having played into a bunker, he has lost a stroke or the
best part of one, and accepts the position without any further ado, he
has gone a long way in the cultivation of the most desirable properties
of mind and temperament with which any player of the game can be
endowed. This man, recognising that his stroke is lost, when he goes up
to his ball and studies the many difficulties of its situation, plays
for the mere purpose of getting out again, and probably putting himself
on the other side in that one stroke which was lost. It does not matter
to him if he only gets two yards beyond the bunker--just far enough to
enable him to take his stance and swing properly for the next shot.
Distance is positively no object whatever, and in this way he insures
himself against further loss, and goes the right way to make up for his
misfortune.