Ilkwuilm 
v ^ / \ 
• ' A HOLE 
THIRTY-FIVE 
MILES LONG! 
BY TH OYLER~\ 
ND’OUBTEDLY the longest 
hole ever played at golf is 
one measuring a distance of 
no less than twenty-six miles 
in a bee-line and thirty-five 
in actual play, the tee being 
at Linton Park, near Maid- 
stone. and the putting-green at Littlestone- 
on-Sca. The writer of this article was one 
of the players in this unique performance. 
A party of golfers who resided in the neigh- 
bourhood of Maidstone were returning from 
Littlestone, where they had been spending 
the day on the famous links. While waiting 
for a train at Appledore Junction a conversa- 
tion took place respecting freak golf matches, 
and the question arose as to how many strokes 
would be needed by two men playing alter- 
nately to cover the distance between Maid- 
stone and Littlestone. One of the party 
suggested that about two thousand would be 
a fair number, whereupon a popular sporting 
person replied that he was prepared to lay a 
wager of five pounds that none of those present 
could do it in that number. With very little 
time for consideration the bet was accepted 
by two members of the party, and arrange- 
ments for this extraordinary match were 
settled in less than five minutes. 
The only stipulations made by the layer of 
the wager were that the match should take 
place within three months, that the ordinary 
rules of golf should be observed, and that, as 
he was not prepared to journey on foot for 
so long a distance, an umpire should be 
appointed to keep the score. A well-known 
Cambridge undergraduate kindly offered to 
undertake this office, though had he known the 
large amount of monotonous work attached 
to it, it is very doubtful if he would have 
accepted. It was "decided to take two or 
TUli START I'KOM LINTON PARK, 
three of each of the following clubs — brassie, 
cleek, and niblick, with one driving-iron and 
about half a gallon of old balls which were 
newly painted and carried in a bag. 
The start was made in the early morning 
of a beautiful day in spring from the north 
gate of Linton Park, about three miles south 
of Maidstone, Mr. F. S. W. Cornwallis, the 
popular squire of Linton, having kindly 
given us permission to make the first part 
of our journey through his lovely park. 
The beginning was not propitious ; the 
carriage -drive, beside which our first and 
only tee was made, is of snake-like form, 
its sinuous windings extending for some 
two or three hundred yards, and the first 
drive with a brassie landed our ball in a 
rhododendron-bush, out of which we dropped 
with a penalty. The third shot was a repe- 
tition of the first, so it was thought better to 
use a cleek, which we did until the cricket- 
ground was reached, where the brassie again 
came into play. Frequent stymies by trees 
marred our progress through the lower part 
of the park, until a niblick shot carried us over 
the high wooden fence at the bottom into the 
pastures beyond. We had taken far too many 
strokes for this short distance, but now we 
were able to use our brassie more frequently, 
though rough grass often spoilt the length of 
our shots. Hedges frequently caught the ball 
and necessitated dropping, with the con- 
sequent loss of strokes. At the sixty-fifth 
shot the River Beult was reached, and our 
ball promptly disappeared in it and was lost. 
Another which we dropped found its way 
into a backwater, but was retrieved. 
At 11.25 we reached Hertsfield Bridge with 
a good brassie shot (No. 97) that carried both 
the river and road. Long grass and rushes 
here caused the niblick to be used freely. 
