March, 1916 Golfers Magazine
He had made a 69. Great gods, could it have been a fluke? He sweated and tossed and slept not. As soon as dawn broke he took his clubs and flew to the first tee. A 240-yard drive, straight as an arrow—ah, thank heaven!
He made the first nine holes in 36, and, drunk with happiness, returned to the club house for breakfast.
Tom Innes arrived on the nine o’clock train, and Mr. Jellie took him out and beat him 6 and 5 in the morning and 8 and 7 in the afternoon. On the following day Silas Penfield was the victim, also for two matches. By that time Mac Donaldson had heard of the miracle that was taking place on the fashionable links of the Grassview Country Club, and Friday morning he took Mr. Jellie on for a match, and was badly beaten.
On Saturday nothing was heard at Grassview but talk of Jellie. His caddie had acguired an air of insolent arrogance. Mac Donaldson spoke of him in low, mysterious tones. But for the most part there was doubt, especially on the part of those men who had been winning innumerable boxes of balls from him for the past three years with ridiculous ease.
“Yes,” said Marsfield, the Egyptologist, employing a formula of golf wit that is older than St. Andrews; “yes, Jellie might make a 69—for nine holes.”
“I’ll tell you what Ill do,” retorted Mr. Jellie, turning on him. “I’ll take you and Rogers and Huntington and play your best ball for five hundred dollars a side.”
There ensued a clamor of discussion. Fraser took Marsfield to one side and advised him strongly to “stay off.” Rogers was scornful, but cautious. Huntington, a good sport, decided it by declaring that it would be worth the price to see old Jellie do it.
Old Jellie did it, but not without a tussle. News of the match had spread over the links and through the club house, and by the time they reached the turn they were trailed by a gallery of some fifty persons. Mr. Jellie gave them all they were looking for. He went around 3 under par and won by 4 and 3. They forced him to make a speech in the dining room that evening, and in a toast he was referred to as “our next club champion.”
And this Aloysius Jellie, who had been the sucker, the easy thing, the object of much amused contempt, became the glory and pride of Grassview. The months of June and July were one continuous succession of triumphs. Middleton, who had met Francis Ouimet in the semi-finals at Ekwanok the year before, was the only member of the club who dared to play him on even terms, and Middleton suffered ignominious defeat. The greatest day of all occurred in mid-July. Tom McNamara and Mike Brady had appeared at Grassview on a visit to their old friend Donaldson, and about the first thing Mac had spoken of was Jellie and his miraculous reversal of form. The two visitors expressed a desire to see the marvel in action.
And Mr. Jellie took on McNamara, Brady and Donaldson and beat them one up, playing their best ball.
He played exhibition matches with various visiting amateurs and pros, and suffered no defeats. On July 28 he won the New Jersey, and on July 12 the Metropolitan amateur championship. He lowered the course records from one to four strokes at Englewood, Baltusrol, Garden City, Wykagyl, Piping Rock and Upper Montclair. The whole golfing world was ablaze with his fame, and countless duffers tried to imitate his ungainly, bizarre swing, with disastrous results. The newspapers ran columns about him, and the sport writers unanimously predicted that with Jellie to lead the attack the next American assault on Vardon, Taylor and Braid would bring England’s cup across the water. There was printed again and again the amusing tale of the dog Nibbie, and the story of his untimely death.
Mr. Jellie himself was far from forgetting Nibbie. Often, when at Grassview, he would stand for some time in his room gazing at a small bronze urn which occupied the place of honor on the mantel. It was inscribed:
