Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Golf has a rich history of literature, and baseball is probably the only sport to compare in that regard. Not that golf is any more spectacular than the rest, but that the writers of golf are of a class shared only by baseball. Names like Henry Longhurst (quoted above), Bernard Darwin, Henry Warren Wind, John Updike, and Grantland Rice grace the pages of golf story collections. It has to do with the pace of golf and the people involved I would guess.

I have been building my personal library of golf books, and adding many of these classics. I don’t collect how-to books, but rather enjoy the reading of histories, personal stories, and tall tales. I have two golf books by P. G. Wodehouse, best known for the “Jeeves and Wooster” books. The first is The Golf Omnibus, of which I have an old, well-read copy from a used book store. The second is a new one I just received, The Clicking of Cuthbert.

It was Wodehouse’s first golf collection, originally published in 1922, and regales us with tales spun by The Oldest Member to those unwary souls who stumbled into his presence on the clubhouse porch and are too polite to extricate themselves from the encounter.

As a simple appetizer from Omnibus:

Archibald Mealing was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirrror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America.

Many golfers share Archibald’s enthusiasm. I do. But I also share the desire to write as well as people like Wodehouse.