Golf Stories by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Humorous stories, Golf stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-03-31T20:36:19+00:00

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It was Ferdin­and’s healthy cus­tom of a morn­ing to get up in good time and take a dip in the sea be­fore break­fast. On the morn­ing of the day of Bar­bara’s ar­rival, he arose as usu­al, donned his flan­nels, took a good look at the cup, and star­ted out. It was a fine, fresh morn­ing, and he glowed both ex­tern­ally and in­tern­ally. As he crossed the links, for the nearest route to the wa­ter was through the fair­way of the sev­enth, he was whist­ling hap­pily and re­hears­ing in his mind the open­ing sen­tences of his pro­pos­al. For it was his firm re­solve that night after din­ner to ask Bar­bara to marry him. He was pro­ceed­ing over the smooth turf without a care in the world when there was a sud­den cry of “Fore!” and the next mo­ment a golf ball, miss­ing him by inches, sailed up the fair­way and came to rest fifty yards from where he stood. He looked round and ob­served a fig­ure com­ing to­wards him from the tee.

The dis­tance from the tee was fully a hun­dred and thirty yards. Add fifty to that, and you have a hun­dred and eighty yards. No such drive had been made on the Mar­vis Bay links since their found­a­tion, and such is the gen­er­ous spir­it of the true golfer that Ferdin­and’s first emo­tion, after the not in­ex­cus­able spasm of pan­ic caused by the hum of the glob­ule past his ear, was one of cor­di­al ad­mir­a­tion. By some kindly mir­acle, he sup­posed, one of his hotel ac­quaint­ances had been per­mit­ted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only when the oth­er man came up that there began to steal over him a sick­en­ing ap­pre­hen­sion. The faces of all those who hewed divots on the hotel course were fa­mil­i­ar to him, and the fact that this fel­low was a stranger seemed to point with dread­ful cer­tainty to his be­ing the man he had agreed to play.

“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strik­ingly hand­some youth with brown eyes and a dark mous­tache.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdin­and. “Er—do you al­ways drive like that?”

“Well, I gen­er­ally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this morn­ing. It’s lucky I came out and got this prac­tice. I’m play­ing a match to­mor­row with a fel­low named Dibble, who’s a loc­al cham­pi­on or some­thing.”

“Me,” said Ferdin­and, humbly.

“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him ap­prais­ingly. “Well, may the best man win.”

As this was pre­cisely what Ferdin­and was afraid was go­ing to hap­pen, he nod­ded in a sickly man­ner and tottered off to his bathe. The ma­gic had gone out of the morn­ing. The sun still shone, but in a silly, feeble way; and a cold and de­press­ing wind had sprung up. For Ferdin­and’s in­feri­or­ity com­plex, which had seemed cured forever, was back again, do­ing busi­ness at the old stand.

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