Not that it Matters | Page 8

all the clever things that we should think out. It goes about its
business solidly and unromantically, and by the ordinary laws of
chance it achieves every now and then something startling and
romantic. Superstition thrives on the fact that only the accidental
dramas are reported.
But there are charms to secure happiness as well as charms to avert evil.
In these I am a firm believer. I do not mean that I believe that a
horseshoe hung up in the house will bring me good luck; I mean that if
anybody does believe this, then the hanging up of his horseshoe will
probably bring him good luck. For if you believe that you are going to
be lucky, you go about your business with a smile, you take disaster
with a smile, you start afresh with a smile. And to do that is to be in the
way of happiness.

The Charm of Golf

When he reads of the notable doings of famous golfers, the
eighteen-handicap man has no envy in his heart. For by this time he has

discovered the great secret of golf. Before he began to play he
wondered wherein lay the fascination of it; now he knows. Golf is so
popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be
bad.
Consider what it is to be bad at cricket. You have bought a new bat,
perfect in balance; a new pair of pads, white as driven snow; gloves of
the very latest design. Do they let you use them? No. After one ball, in
the negotiation of which neither your bat, nor your pads, nor your
gloves came into play, they send you back into the pavilion to spend
the rest of the afternoon listening to fatuous stories of some old
gentleman who knew Fuller Pilch. And when your side takes the field,
where are you? Probably at long leg both ends, exposed to the public
gaze as the worst fieldsman in London. How devastating are your
emotions. Remorse, anger, mortification, fill your heart; above all,
envy--envy of the lucky immortals who disport themselves on the green
level of Lord's.
Consider what it is to be bad at lawn tennis. True, you are allowed to
hold on to your new racket all through the game, but how often are you
allowed to employ it usefully? How often does your partner cry
"Mine!" and bundle you out of the way? Is there pleasure in playing
football badly? You may spend the full eighty minutes in your new
boots, but your relations with the ball will be distant. They do not give
you a ball to yourself at football.
But how different a game is golf. At golf it is the bad player who gets
the most strokes. However good his opponent, the bad player has the
right to play out each hole to the end; he will get more than his share of
the game. He need have no fears that his new driver will not be
employed. He will have as many swings with it as the scratch man;
more, if he misses the ball altogether upon one or two tees. If he buys a
new niblick he is certain to get fun out of it on the very first day.
And, above all, there is this to be said for golfing mediocrity-- the bad
player can make the strokes of the good player. The poor cricketer has
perhaps never made fifty in his life; as soon as he stands at the wickets
he knows that he is not going to make fifty to-day. But the
eighteen-handicap man has some time or other played every hole on the
course to perfection. He has driven a ball 250 yards; he has made
superb approaches; he has run down the long putt. Any of these things

may suddenly happen to him again. And therefore it is not his fate to
have to sit in the club smoking- room after his second round and listen
to the wonderful deeds of others. He can join in too. He can say with
perfect truth, "I once carried the ditch at the fourth with my second," or
"I remember when I drove into the bunker guarding the eighth green,"
or even "I did a three at the eleventh this afternoon"--bogey being five.
But if the bad cricketer says, "I remember when I took a century in
forty minutes off Lockwood and Richardson," he is nothing but a liar.
For these and other reasons golf is the best game in the world for the
bad player. And sometimes I am tempted to go further and say that it is
a better game for the bad player than for the good player. The joy of
driving a