Short Story #1: A LESSON ON THE LINKS by Stephen Leacock
I intended to post one short story each month this year to keep up with the Short Story Challenge hosted by Dead Book Darling. This then, is January’s entry, just a shade late.
Stephen Leacock was an English-born Canadian who early in his career as a school teacher, turned to writing fiction, humour, and short reports to supplement his regular income. His stories first published in magazines in Canada and the U.S., became extremely popular around the world. The Canadian Encyclopedia asserts that it was said in 1911 that more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada.
His short story A Lesson on the Links: The Application of Mathematics to Golf
is included in the book My Financial Career and Other Follies 
An excerpt:
Here is a very interesting calculation in regard to “allowing for the wind.”
I have noticed that a great many golf players of my own particular class are always preoccupied with the question of “allowing for the wind.” My friend, Amphibius Jones, for example, just before driving always murmurs something, as if in prayer, about “allowing for the wind.” After driving he says with a sigh, “I didn’t allow for the wind.” In fact, all through my class there is a general feeling that our game is practically ruined by the wind(…)
It occurred to me that it might be interesting to reduce to a formulae the effect exercised by the resistance of the wind on a moving golf ball. For example, in our game last Wednesday, Jones in his drive struck the ball with what he assures me was his full force, hitting it with absolute accuracy, as he himself admits, fair in the center, and he himself feeling, on his own assertion, absolutely fit, his eye being (a very necessary thing with Jones), absolutely “in,” and he also having on his proper sweater, — a further condition of first-class play. Under all the favorable circumstances the ball only advanced fifty yards! It was evident at once that it was a simple matter of the wind, which was of that treacherous character which blows over the links unnoticed, had impinged full upon the ball, pressed it backward and forced it to the earth.
Leacock then applies various mathematical formulae, factual or specious is beyond me, although they sound convincing and concludes:
(T)aking Jones’s statements at their face value the ball would have traveled, had it not been for the wind, no less than 6½ miles.
If this makes you chuckle, be sure to check out the whole story, and more of Leacock.
If you’re Canadian, what’s been your exposure to Stephen Leacock? If you’re not Canadian, is your reaction “Stephen who?”
For Canadian readers:
My Financial Career and Other Follies
I’m not Canadian (although I’m now technically a legal resident of Canada), but I have heard of Stephen Leacock. Now I’m motivated to read him as well — he sounds like a fascinating person 🙂
I think so too, Bonnie: I would love to sit down and talk with him….mmmmm..maybe one of those ‘literary dream dinners’?
Thank you for the excerpt from “A Lesson On The Links”. I have been a fan of Stephen Leacock from childhood- one of my brothers and I were very recently remembering our Dad who often read to us when we were very young, reading ‘My Financial Career’ by Leacock and how he would have to interrupt his reading often to wipe the tears of hearty laughter from his eyes!
Stephen Leacock’s writing was and is a Canadian treasure. I particularly appreciate your savvy observation that he “pokes gentle fun at the duffers of his day”. It was a hallmark of Leacock’s writing that his words were never caustic or mean-spirited. One could easily imagine that he was poking fun also at himself as the writer, as in “My Financial Career”.
Thank you for reminding me and all of your readers of the existence of “My Financial Career and Other Follies”. I for one, will hasten to obtain a copy because strangely, I who formerly believed that I had read everything written by Leacock, have not read “A Lesson On The Links”.
I was introduced to Leacock at a young age, too, Elizabeth.
His humour was often self-deprecating and never biting. He comes across as a man who loves people with all of their foibles. He certainly is a Canadian treasure and I wish he was more widely read and appreciated today.