There were certain trees into which he inevitably drove, certain waggish bends of the river where, no matter how he might face, he was sure to arrive.  There was a space of exactly ten inches under the clubhouse where his balls alone could disappear.  He never ran down a long put, but always hung on the rim of the cup.  It was his adversary who executed phenomenal shots, approaches of eighty yards that dribbled home, sliced drives that hit a fence and bounded back on the course.  Nothing of this agreeable sort had ever happened or could ever happen to him.  Finally the conviction of a certain predestined damnation settled upon him.  He no longer struggled; his once rollicking spirits settled into a moody despair.  Nothing encouraged him or could trick him into a display of hope.  If he achieved a four and two twos on the first holes, he would say vindictively: 

“What’s the use?  I’ll lose my ball on the fifth.”

And when this happened, he no longer swore, but said gloomily with even a sense of satisfaction:  “You can’t get me excited.  Didn’t I know it would happen?”

Once in a while he had broken out, “If ever my luck changes, if it comes all at once—­”

But he never ended the sentence, ashamed, as it were, to have indulged in such a childish fancy.  Yet, as Providence moves in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, it was just this invincible pessimism that alone could have permitted Booverman to accomplish the incredible experience that befell him.

II

Topics of engrossing mental interests are bad form on the golf-links, since they leave a disturbing memory in the mind to divert it from that absolute intellectual concentration which the game demands.  Therefore Pickings and Booverman, as they started toward the crowded first tee, remarked de rigueur: 

“Good weather.”

“A bit of a breeze.”

“Not strong enough to affect the drives.”

“The greens have baked out.”

“Fast as I’ve seen them.”

“Well, it won’t help me.”

“How do you know?” said Pickings, politely, for the hundredth time.  “Perhaps this is the day you’ll get your score.”

Booverman ignored this set remark, laying his ball on the rack, where two predecessors were waiting, and settled beside Pickings at the foot of the elm which later, he knew, would rob him of a four on the home green.

Wessels and Pollock, literary representatives, were preparing to drive.  They were converts of the summer, each sacrificing their season’s output in a frantic effort to surpass the other.  Pickings, the purist, did not approve of them in the least.  They brought to the royal and ancient game a spirit of Bohemian irreverence and banter that offended his serious enthusiasm.

When Wessels made a convulsive stab at his ball and luckily achieved good distance, Pollock remarked behind his hand, “A good shot, damn it!”