The First Swing of Spring

The members of the Harvard golf team awoke yesterday morning to hear the presistent patter of rain drops percolating down their windowpanes. It was with inutterable sadness that the Crimson linksters returned to their anonymous beds assured that their opening day match against Tufts and Amherst would have to await a more clement day.

In this season of rain the linksters pine for the first hint of spring, when they can remove their dusty clubs from their winter quarters. The first shot of spring has a mystical significance as the golfer stands on the tee looking somewhat like Keats' "stout cortez" as he surveys his shot sailing over the unsullied fairway.

Although the Harvard golf team could not get out to the course yesterday, the rain did not prevent that rite known as the first swing of spring from taking place as scheduled. Undaunted by the pelting rain and driven snow, Spence Fitzgibbons, one of the captains of the golf team, found a suitably muddy patch of turf and surrounded by a tatterdemalion group of caddies and onlookers proceeded to tee up his ball and waggle his driver in preparation.

A hush fell over this assemblage and all that could be heard was the chirping of a bewildered bird--"How well the silvery voice of the warbler with its joyous and innocent twitter blends with the fragrance of the lily of the valley!"

The driver came down in a graceful are, the whizzing ball bore its way out over the Charles, and the opening of spring golf season was official.

While awaiting the coming of spring, the golfer has to ward off his malaise with appropriate diversions. One of the most popular means to avoid the doldrums during the long winter months is to play "ice golf." Every year over two hundred golfers take part in the Chili Open Golf Classic that is played in Akron, Ohio in the dead of winter.

The Chili Open is held on Nesmith Lake when it is frozen over a foot solid. The participants are given colored golf balls, holes are gouged out of the ice, and evergreen trees are placed along the slick fairways.

Surprisingly enough, it is possible to trace playing golf on the ice back to a distant origin. Samuel Parrish, one of the founders of Shinnecock Golf Club in Southampton, Long Island wrote: "One winter's day in the '90s Major Morton and myself went over to Lake Agawam to hit a few balls around on the ice. The Major suggested that I make an attempt to break all records for driving a golf ball. We selected a suitable spot and I managed to hit a good one which, with a strong wind, carried to the ice and, once on the smooth surface, slid across the lake and landed in a snow bank on the other side. The Major was highly elated over the stunt and decided to measure the distance...

Later in the day he posted in the clubhouse a statement to the effect that I, under favorable conditions, had driven a golf ball 489 1/2 yards, no particulars being given. The result was that for a short time, until the facts were known, I enjoyed the undeserved reputation of being a tremendous driver, and my fame spread as far as Boston."

Ultimately, however, there is nothing that can replace the pure bliss of the first round of spring. The golfer sets out with each of his footprints showing distinctly on the dewy, untouched fairway, confident that he will strike the ball flawlessy for all the shanks and duck hooks of the previous year have been forgotten.

When spring is near the urge to swing a golf club becomes a terrible and irrepressible force, and it was this irrepressible force that overtook Fitzgibbons yesterday afternoon. The sentiments of Fitzgibbons as he prepared to take the first swing of spring were echoed by Bernard Darwin when he wrote of his own first shot one spring long ago: "I was assured that I should be able to do it another day, but I did not want to do it another day; I may never want to do it on any other day, but I did so dreadfully want to have just one shot then."