The club-house at Pau is of the kind you would expect to discover at a good club of long and honourable standing up-country in England. The attributes of age and tradition are to be found within it. On a wall is a painting twelve feet long depicting the leading golfers of Pau in 1884, assembled on the course, and it was done by that Major Hopkins who did such work, now celebrated, concerning the earliest golfers at Westward Ho! gathered by their iron hut. In this picture of Pau there are some eminent golfers shown, such as Colonel Kennard, not long since dead, who was field-marshal of the Royal Blackheath Club; but the artist leads the eye to the gaunt figure of Sir Victor Brooke, a tam-o'-shanter on his head, addressing the ball on the tee in the way of a determined man. Sir Victor, for four or five years captain of the club, was the lion of the golf of Pau in those days, and when a match book, now lying musty in a corner, was started his was the first entry that was made in it. The course is beautifully situated on the Billère plain, a mile or so to the west of the middle of the town; and in the unusual absence of a friendly car it is a pleasant walk through a shaded avenue of lofty beeches in the splendid Parc du Château.
One is a little puzzled to estimate the quality of this course, being faced with a kind of semi-official printed statement that "Pau is undoubtedly the best course on the continent" which to some degree is intimidating. The turf, grown on a dark, sandy soil, is excellent, and more than fifty years of play upon it have given it the firmness and crispness that we miss elsewhere. The holes are of good length, well arranged, and not easy. Yet pancake was never flatter than the central part of the course, and with the very dullest and plainest kind of mid-Victorian bunkering--three low, straight grassy banks in line with each other right across the fairway--the golf hereabouts is less good to the eye, at all events, than it is to the spirit in the play. The first hole, a long one, with a road running diagonally across near the green, close to which there is a little cottage, somehow by its surroundings recalls memories of old "Mrs. Forman's" at ancient Musselburgh, and the second is a short hole of quality. From the fourth tee the line of the course bends round to the right, and for half a dozen holes we are away from that central part; there are ups and downs in the land that give more colour to the golf, and here and there are clumps of bushes that need consideration. All the time we are close to the bank of the River Gave, and at length, near to a point where a wild stream plunges into it, we cross to a spit of land between them and play a few holes there. They are nice holes. The ground heaves and rolls, and there must be good calculation and accuracy in approaching. Another stream runs through this isolated part of the course, and the green of the fourteenth hole closes to a point where two running waters nearly meet and there is a rutty road alongside. It is a pretty green, the situation is cunning and delightful, and that fourteenth hole is one of the best in France. Not a doubt about it--Pau is very good in parts. But we turn up a note on the golf in a little guide to Pau, and read: "Owing to the nature of the soil and their admirable preservation, the links at Pau compare favourably with the course at St. Andrews, in Scotland, where the conditions are almost ideal." O, Pau!