Stories submitted by: The Order Archive - Brother Cartwright

Editor’s Note: The following account has been preserved from the Order’s archives. Some minor adjustments to wording have been made for modern readability, but the spirit and substance of the original telling remain unchanged.

You think the worst hazard is a bunker? Try stripes and teeth. Aye, I played that round, and I lived to tell it. So fill my glass and listen close, because the beast didn’t come all at once. It came like a shadow, hole by hole.

Calcutta, 1832. The heat was thick as treacle, and the maidan shimmered like a brass plate under the sun. We had feathered balls, borrowed clubs, and a handful of Scots who swore they could play through anything. One of them, an officer with more whisky than sense, slammed his glass and said, “I’ll play tomorrow, tiger or no tiger.”

The room went quiet. Tigers had been sighted near the river, bold enough to stalk the edge of the course. I laughed, thinking it was drink talking. But at dawn, there he was on the first tee, boots polished, chin high, and a wager on the table: a case of brandy if he finished the round.

The first hole was a furnace. He drove long, ball skittering over baked earth, and roared like a king. By the third, sweat poured down his neck, and the caddies whispered of stripes in the scrub. I saw a paw print near the tee, big as a man’s hand. The officer laughed it off, but his grip was tighter than a drum.

At the sixth, the wind died, and the silence was heavy. A low growl rolled across the grass like distant thunder. The officer swung hard, sliced into the rough, and cursed the heat. I kept my eyes sharp and my nerves tighter than rope.

By the ninth, the whispers were louder than the birds. A flash of movement in the tall grass. A tail, striped and slow, curling like smoke. The officer wiped his brow and said, “Press on.” His voice cracked like dry wood.

The twelfth was the reckoning. The tiger stepped out, stripes blazing, eyes like molten gold. It moved low, muscles rippling, and fixed its gaze on the officer mid-swing. The ball trickled into a hollow as the beast padded closer, silent as death.

Chaos erupted. Clubs flew, men scattered, and I grabbed the officer by his collar before he bolted into the open. We ran for the kitchen at the edge of the course, snatched a haunch of meat, and threw it wide. The tiger turned, muscles rippling, and vanished into the scrub with its prize.

The officer still claims he made par. I claim he made history. And me? I poured the brandy that night and taught every man in that room the first rule of the nineteenth: never boast what you cannot play.

So drink to me, lads. To the day golf met its fiercest hazard, and the man who kept the game alive with nothing but meat and nerve.