The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship

by Stephen Potter

  My own name has been associated – against my will2 – with an attempt to bring the Primitive Hamper up to date. The essence of the modern approach is the making of the pause as if for the sake of your opponent’s game. E.g., at lawn tennis, opponent having won six consecutive points:

  GAMESMAN (calling): Wait a minute.

  OPPONENT: What’s wrong?

  GAMESMAN (turning to look at a child walking slowly along a path a hundred yards behind the court. Then turning back): Those damn kids.

  OPPONENT: Where?

  GAMESMAN: Walking across your line of sight.

  OPPONENT: What?

  GAMESMAN: I said ‘Walking across your line of sight’.

  OPPONENT: I can’t see anyone.

  GAMESMAN: What?

  OPPONENT: I say I can’t see anyone.

  GAMESMAN (continues less distinctly): … bang in the line of sight … ought to be shot … etc.

  Or, in a billiard room, your opponent has made a break of eight, and looks as if he may be going to make eight more. If two or more people are present they are likely not to be especially interested in the game, and quietly talking, perhaps. Or moving teacups. Or glasses. Simulate annoyance, on your opponent’s behalf, with the onlookers. An occasional irritated glance will prepare the way; then stop your opponent and say:

  GAMESMAN (quietly): Are they worrying you?

  LAYMAN: Who?

  GAMESMAN: Compton and Peters.

  LAYMAN: It’s all right.

  Or say to the whisperers, half, but only half, jokingly: ‘Hi, I say. This is a billiard room, you know. Dead silence, please!’

  This should not only put an end to opponent’s break. It may cause him, if young, to be genuinely embarrassed.

  Further ‘Improved Primitives’ are (a) the removal of an imaginary hair from opponent’s ball, when he is in play; (b) licking of finger to pick up speck of dust, etc. For squash, badminton, rackets, tennis or indoor lawn-tennis courts or fives-courts in rainy weather, it will usually be possible to find a small patch on to which water is dripping. When opponent is winning, particularly if he is winning his service, become suddenly alarmed for his safety.

  1. Make futile efforts to remove water with handkerchief or by kicking at it.

  2. Talk of danger of slipping, and

  3. If necessary call for sawdust, which, of course, will be unobtainable.

  The Secondary Hamper

  (Note. This section is for advanced students only. All others move straight to Chapter 7. Students who have made no progress at all should go back to the beginning.)

  The Secondary Hamper is still in an early stage of development: and there are at least three London Clubs where it is not used. As followers of a recent Daily Telegraph correspondence will know, the Secondary Hamper is not allowed on the G.W.R.3 But my view, for what it is worth, is that Bristol will have to follow where Manchester led.

  The object of the secondary hamper is to bring to bear on the game private life – your own or your opponent’s. The whole ploy is based, of course, on the proved fact that in certain circumstances, and at certain times, such a simple remark as ‘We’re very lucky in our new son-in-law’ may have a profound effect on the game. Or take such an apparently innocent sequence as this:

  GAMESMAN: I was fortunate enough to meet your daughter on Sunday.

  LAYMAN: Yes, indeed – I know. She told me.

  GAMESMAN: What wonderful hair – a real Titian.

  LAYMAN: Oh – no – that can’t have been my daughter – that was Ethel Baird.

  GAMESMAN: Really. But I thought I was talking to your –

  LAYMAN: You were, but that was earlier on.

  GAMESMAN: I was fortunate enough to meet your daughter’s hair?

  LAYMAN: Well – a sort of brown –

  GAMESMAN: Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course.

  Simple and ordinary as such a conversation seems to be, the master gamesman, in play against the less experienced, can turn it to his advantage. A featherweight distraction … a fleeting annoyance … a handicap of a sort if only because the victim is made to feel that he is being got at in some way.

  These dialogue attacks or ‘parlettes’ led to many other secondaries, still more intimately personal in approach, including especially, of course, those taught me by Edward Grice just before the recent World War.4 I now use them more than any other gamesmanship gambit: and Grice himself was good enough to say, in 1939, that the basic ‘Second Secondary’ which I evolved for my own use was not less useful than one or two of his own.

  Nothing was printed, and then the war came, and I remember telling my wife with some pride that there was a security stop on my little invention! So now, in 1947, it appears in print for the first time.

  The idea grew out of a memory from my pre-gamesman days. My friend J. J. (as I will call him) and I played croquet together in a relentless and unending series of singles. In those days J. J. could beat me. But there was a certain memorable spring, a certain March to June, when the upper hand was just as regularly with me.

  What had happened? I searched through old letters and diaries, to try to find the cause. The explanation was simple.

  During those three months, J. J., for the first and last time in his life, had had a very marked success with a girl I was fond of. J. J., in fact, had, or felt that he had, snatched this girl away from me. I may have been upset. I believe that – in so far as one could be upset in the midst of a croquet series – I did feel it. But whatever the facts, J. J. found himself constitutionally unable to win his games against me during this period. With his blue and black both on the last hoop, he would unaccountably allow me to hoop and peg out one of his balls. Or he would fail to get started at all, till I was halfway round with my red, his two clips remaining on the first hoop pathetically, forlornly, and lopsidedly perched like a fox-terrier’s ears.

  And now, in a flash, I realized the cause of J. J.’s lapse. He could not bring himself to strike a man when he was down, particularly since he himself was the cause of the trouble, or so he believed.

  From the games point of view, it was a fortunate situation for me. J. J. never quite regained his superiority – and, in fact, in our present series I am three up. Years later, in my gamesman days, it struck me that what was successful before, might be successful again. In the autumn of 1935 I again found myself engaged in a long series of singles again my old games friend ‘Dr Bill’, as I will call him. This time the game was golf; but again I found myself in the position of regular loser.

  I chose the day and the time. I had suffered my seventh consecutive defeat. The conversation ran something like this. I spoke of a mutual friend, to whom I had purposely introduced Dr Bill six weeks before. Her name was Patricia Forrest.5

  S. P. (suddenly, à propos of nothing): What a grand girl Pat is.

  Dr BILL: Yes, isn’t she? You see quite a bit of her, don’t you?

  S.P.: Well… we’re kind of old friends.

  Dr BILL: I thought so.

  (Pause.)

  S. P.: Which exactly describes it. Alas!

  Dr BILL: What do you mean?

  S. P.: Well – you know.

  Dr BILL: What do you mean, sort of–?

  S. P. (gruffly): I shall always like her – very much.

  Dr BILL: I’m sure I would if I knew her.

  (Pause.)

  S. P. (with glance): She was talking about you the other day.

  Dr BILL (slight pause): Me?

  S. P. (giving him warm-hearted, Major Dobbin look): I think she likes you, bless you. (At this point a hand may be laid on the forearm. But a transient grip of the elbow is better. See Fig. 8.)

  Fig. 8. Advanced Secondary Hamper (f). (a) Hand laid on forearm (right). (b) Transient grip of the elbow (better).

  Dr BILL: I don’t think she even knows I exist –

  S. P.: On the contrary, she’s very well aware of it indeed … damn your eyes!

  ‘Damn your eyes!’ is said, of course, in a friendl
y nicechap voice. If opponent is still mystified, then gamesman should (1) become despondent and silent or (2) he should knock off head of dandelion with any iron club either by means of (a) an ordinary rough golf stroke, or (b) better, with a one-armed ‘windmill’ swing (see Fig. 9).

  Now what happens? Your Dr Bill will feel pleased and flattered as a ladies’ man. ‘I am a success with Pat’ (or whoever she is), he will say to himself. But being a success with Patricia is a very long way from, in fact definitely opposed to, being at great pains to defeat your unfortunate and unsuccessful rival at anything so comparatively trivial6 as a game. Indeed, arranged properly the gambit will lead him to feel that having pinched your girl it is more or less incumbent on him to allow you to win.

  Note. There is of course an obvious counter-game to this gambit, and it is a fascinating ‘show’ for the spectators to watch two gamesmen trying to prove that it is the other one whom the girl really prefers. Leonards and McDirk used to draw a big crowd when they were fighting out a match on these lines.

  Fig. 9. Advanced Secondary Hamper (2). (a) Dandelion swing (wrong). (b) Dandelion swing (right).

  I was once dangerously counter-gamed in the teeth of my own gambit. My opponent cut in on the words ‘We’re very old friends’ with a new line of thought which ran as follows:

  COUNTER-GAMESMAN: Well, I ought to play well today.

  GAMESMAN: You always do. But what’s up? Anything special?

  COUNTER-GAMESMAN: I’m a free man.

  GAMESMAN: Splendid. What do you mean?

  COUNTER-GAMESMAN: I’m one of the idle classes.

  GAMESMAN (genuinely interested): What – you haven’t left the North British and United?

  COUNTER-GAMESMAN (stiffly): They are very sorry. They are cutting down staff.

  GAMESMAN: You mean you’ve got the sack?

  In the face of this disaster to my friend it was hopeless to go on with the ‘You’re a lucky fellow’ sequence. And I’m bound to admit that my contra-counter (‘Well, we must moan together: the doctor says this is the last game I shall ever be able to play’) seemed lame and forced. But the small band of us who are interested in this branch of the game, believe me, will continue to improve and experiment; though bold man would he be who could boast a defence against every conceivable counter-hamper.

  Hampettes

  ‘Hampettes’, or minor hampers, exist in plenty. Many of them are of occasional use to the losing gamesman. Many of them come under the heading ‘Of course, this isn’t really my game’ (see ‘Ruggership’). While playing squash, let it be known that rackets is your Game, and that squash is that very different thing, a game which you find it occasionally amusing to play at, for the fun of the thing. R. Simpson first drew my attention to this gambit when I was playing lawn tennis with him on a damp grass court on the borders of Lyme Regis. I happened to be seeing the ball and for once in my life really was driving it on to that precious square foot in the back-hand corner of the base line. After one of these shots, Simpson was ‘carried away’ enough to tap his racket twice on the ground and cry ‘chase better than half a yard’. I only dimly realized that this was an expression from tennis itself, which had slipped out by accident; that he was familiar with the great original archetype of lawn tennis, compared with which lawn tennis itself (he wished to make and succeeded in making me understand) was a kind of French cricket on the sands at Southend.

  I lost that game. But I learnt my lesson. I walked about the real tennis-court at Blackfriars (Manchester) two or three times ‘in order to be taught the game’. I took lessons from the pro (I showed no aptitude). I put by a few shillings in order to buy that most gamesmanly shaped, ungainlily twisted racket. I keep it in the office. And although it has never hit a ball since those Manchester days, I make admirable use of that racket almost every week of my life.

  The Natural Hampette

  There is a hampette which I like to use against a certain type of player. It has no official name: it obeys no code and no rule. Among my small group of students I used to call it ‘After All’.

  ‘After all there are more important things than games.’ There are often occasions, when losing against a particularly grim, competent, unemotional, and ungames-manageable opponent, when this motion may be suggested, as a last resort.

  I use it in golf. Without warning, I assume the character of a nature rambler. ‘Good lord,’ I say, bending down suddenly and examining the turf on the side of the bunker, into which, for once, my opponent has strayed. ‘Good lord. I didn’t know Bristle Agrostis grew in Bucks’.

  LAYMAN: What’s that?

  GAMESMAN: Look. Lovely little grass, with a sharp leaf. It ought to be sandy here.

  LAYMAN: Well, it’s sandy in the bunker.

  GAMESMAN: No, I mean it’s supposed only to grow on sandy soil. Ah well!

  Then later:

  GAMESMAN: What a day! (Breathing deeply.) And what a sky!

  LAYMAN: It’s going to rain if we don’t look sharp.

  GAMESMAN: That’s right. It’s a real Constable sky. That’s the glorious thing about golf, it brings you closer to England.7

  LAYMAN: How d’you mean?

  GAMESMAN (breathes deeply).

  Layman’s game may not yet have been affected, but a tiny seed of doubt has been planted. Is he missing something? Also, his opponent is showing a suspicious lack of anxiety over being two down. A little later you pick up a loose piece of mud behind your ball, as if to throw it out of the way, and then you suddenly stop, and look at the scrap of muck.

  GAMESMAN: Look. Pellet of the tawny owl.

  LAYMAN: Pellet?

  GAMESMAN: Yes. I wonder if she has rodings round here.

  LAYMAN: Rodings?

  GAMESMAN: Yes, there has been a great increase of the tawny owl in Wilts., and if we could show that she was something more than an irregular visitor in Kent it would be good.

  LAYMAN: But this is Berkshire.

  GAMESMAN (thoughtfully): Exactly.

  LAYMAN: I suppose they’re useful. (Layman now feels he must take a halting part in the conversation) I mean – mice –

  GAMESMAN: As a matter of fact we don’t know. The chances at present are fifty-fifty.

  LAYMAN: Oh, yes. Chances of what?

  GAMESMAN: We’re working on her now. All amateur work. The amateurs have done wonderful work. Absolutely splendid.

  This conversation, with identical wording, will do of course for any bird. If a faint crack is now apparent in your opponent’s game, redouble your references to the ‘marvellous work of the amateurs’ whenever you are in earshot. That this gambit (the ‘natural hampette’, I want it to be called) works, is a matter of fact. Why it works, is one of the mysteries of gamesmanship.

  Note I. This technique has no connexion with the ploy of the gamesman who says ‘Whoosh! I wish I’d got my 22 with me’, whenever he sees a bird get up.

  See in this same series Bird Gamesmanship, especially the chapter on Game Birdmanship. Also the pamphlet published by the Six Squires Press – Big Gamesmanship and Blood Sportsmanship: Fact and Fancy, 8d., and the graph, prepared by Ernest Tile, on p. 121.

  Note II. Grass-court tennis and croquet are equally fruitful fields for the Natural (or Naturalist’s) Hampette.

  See Gardens for Gamesmen, or When to be Fond of Flowers (15s.). To give verisimilitude to your natural history asides on the field of golf, or polo, or cricket, any good nature lover’s booklet is recommended. O. Agnes Harriett’s Moth’s Way and Bee’s Wayfaring is a prettily illustrated general account.

  Note III. Against some players it is more irritating to point out any minute little grub and say, ‘Who would think, from its appearance now, that that little fellow will one day turn into a Peacock Blue!’

  7

  Game By Game

  All ob one swallow am too much big swallow.

  Up at Odoreida’s

  Golf

  If I have not said more about golf gamesmanship it is because I am afraid of saying too
much. The whole subject would make a volume in itself. It is a book which I feel should be the work of a younger man. Yet the fact remains that there are many gamesmen who are not golfers. Indeed, many good steady gamesmen, knowing that golf is to me ‘the gamesgame of gamesgames’, have started their gamesplay of rackets or squash or whatever it may be by saying to me, ‘I’m afraid I don’t play golf. Do you know, I’ve never been able to see the point of it?’

  My counter to this simple gambit has always been to say: ‘No – it is, of course, a game of pure skill. It is the best game because no shot one plays can ever be quite the same as any other shot. Luck scarcely enters into it, all one wants is fitness, a good eye, a good nerve and a natural aptitude for games. That’s why I like it.’

  The truth is, of course, that fitness counts for less in golf than in any other game, luck enters into every minute of the contest, and all play is purely incidental to, and conditioned by, gamesmanship.

  To a young man about to undertake the teaching of our science in its special application to golf, I would stress the fact that he must make the student realize the extreme importance of Advicemanship, Bad Luck Play, with special attention to Commiseration, Luncheonship, and, of course, the Secondary Hamper.

  Then, when the student has properly mastered what I have nicknamed (and somehow the nickname has stuck!) ‘Four-up Friendliness’, and when – but not before – he is really familiar with, say, ten of the basic ways of walking off the tee after the drive with, or not with, the opponent – then go straight, say, to Caddie Play – but don’t learn caddie management or try to learn any other secondary ploy, until the primary ploys have been mastered.

  Then, for part two – the secondaries can be approached. I suggest that their importance should be emphasized in this order:

  Splitting

  In the foursome or four-ball game, this, quite simply, is the art of fomenting distrust between your two opponents. And do not let the student forget, in the maze of details, that the basis of Split Play is to make friends with your opponent A, and in that same process undermine his carefully assumed friendship – so easily liable to strain – with his partner, your opponent B, in order that, after the first bad shot by B, the thought ‘Poor you!’ may be clearly implied by a glance from you, a shrug of the shoulders or the whistling of two notes as recommended by Gale (descending minor third).