The Clicking of Cuthbert by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
page 83 of 262 (31%)
page 83 of 262 (31%)
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"The fellow who took up golf at thirty-eight and let the girl he was
engaged to marry go off with someone else because he hadn't the time to combine golf with courtship? I remember. You were telling me about him the other day." "There is a sequel to that story, if you would care to hear it," said the Oldest Member. "You have the honour," said the young man. "Go ahead!" * * * * * Some people (began the Oldest Member) considered that Mortimer Sturgis was too wrapped up in golf, and blamed him for it. I could never see eye to eye with them. In the days of King Arthur nobody thought the worse of a young knight if he suspended all his social and business engagements in favour of a search for the Holy Grail. In the Middle Ages a man could devote his whole life to the Crusades, and the public fawned upon him. Why, then, blame the man of today for a zealous attention to the modern equivalent, the Quest of Scratch! Mortimer Sturgis never became a scratch player, but he did eventually get his handicap down to nine, and I honour him for it. The story which I am about to tell begins in what might be called the middle period of Sturgis's career. He had reached the stage when his handicap was a wobbly twelve; and, as you are no doubt aware, it is then that a man really begins to golf in the true sense of the word. Mortimer's fondness for the game until then had been merely tepid compared with what it became now. He had played a little before, but now he really buckled to and got down to it. It was at this point, too, |
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