The excuse for this chapter in a book written (as set forth), not for the athlete primarily, but for the average man, who is hopelessly incapable of prominence or great excellence in any one branch of athletics, lies in the fact that such a vast number of people nowadays play games, and are so anxious on certain days to do their best at them in some competition, that quite a fair percentage of readers will, it is hoped, pick up a hint or two which may serve them in good stead at that trying moment when they are about to drive a ball from the first tee on some medal day; about to step out on to the glaring prominence of a lawn-tennis court; about to go in (fifth wicket down) when a rot has apparently set in; or, may be, to play a preliminary tie in the City and Suburban Ping-pong Handicap. For it is at these cold and shuddering moments, which no one can hope to meet with more than stolidity, that one needs to have all one’s wits about one, to be able to keep one’s nerve, and to have one’s strong points at one’s fingers’ ends, and one’s weak points (we all have these, and the better one grows at any particular sport, the more glaring they seem proportionately to become) anyhow passably defended. At one minute, or less, from now it may be that your weak point will be attacked; your drive may land you a full iron shot from the green, a stroke you particularly detest; you may have a scurry after a cross-court return; you may have a yorker on the leg stump. In all such, the important thing is, not only to be prepared for them now, but to have been prepared for them so long before that the preparation has become a habit. Such strokes may still be your weak point, but you will meet the emergencies calmly. And to meet any emergency calmly is in itself a favourable defence, for you will then no longer be flurried.

Now in any game, when you have to meet a definite attack of an opponent—this necessity does not apply to a game like golf, or croquet, or billiards, since in such games you have to do the best you can yourself, without fear of active opposition—there is a golden rule, which has never been enough insisted on, and it is the rule that lies at the base of all we have said about training generally, as applied to games. Practice is at the root of it, and the object is to get so familiar with the stroke dictated by the exigencies of the moment, that it is practically automatic.[15] That is to say, as soon as the attack (your opponent’s return, or the bowler’s ball) is coming, you will, with the least possible expenditure of energy, recognise it, get into the position to meet it, and have the stroke ready. For instance, if the game is lawn-tennis, you will see that a drive into the left-hand corner of the court is probable, and before you have really formulated this to yourself consciously, you should be half-way there, not vaguely, but ready for the attack. Your body should have moved almost automatically, and thus your attention and will-power is reserved for noticing your opponent. He may change his mind at the last second (you can never tell about opponents), and instead of driving into the left-hand corner he may lob gently over the net into the right-hand court. Thus your attention, which would—had you not cultivated a sort of correct automatonism—have been used up in getting into the left-hand corner, will be free to observe his change of tactics, and the result is that you will be far more ready for his new attack than you would have been, if all your attention had been taken up in getting into position yourself.

This verbose illustration is necessary to explain a thing that is often overlooked—namely, the necessity of observing your opponent; and the more automatic your own preparations are, and the more instinctively the body works,[16] the more attention you have at your disposal. It follows, as a corollary, that the less trouble you have to take to meet the actual attack, the more you can concentrate your mind on your opponent. The eye should send to the brain the message—“Yorker on the leg stump,” or whatever it may be—and with the least possible expenditure of force, either of muscle or nerve, the attack should be met. The more the movements of the body are automatic, the less you will exhaust yourself. This, in a hard-fought game of racquets, for instance, is an incalculable advantage.

But in order to ensure this automatic movement there is one thing absolutely essential, and that is not practice merely, but correct practice and swift practice. And correct swift practice implies not only much repetition, but concentration of mind. If you perform a new movement a hundred times, let us say, without thought, it may be done correctly, but it cannot be done, if correctly, swiftly. Correctness is the first essential, as we said in the chapter on exercise, and always essential; the swiftness in execution comes mainly with practice; so also does the automatic performance of the correct movement. But it is a very easy thing to lose correctness as the speed increases, and with a view to right this we have recommended—after the movement has been completely understood, and learned in some cases part by part—practice before a glass.

This, then, is the first essential—namely, to have practised one’s weak points till, though they are still perhaps weak, they are performed with the minimum possible of conscious thought, so that one’s attention, as far as may be, is free to observe the opponent. For a long time before the match continually practise your weak points, till they become, if not satisfactory, at any rate fairly easy, and give to your strong points only that amount of practice which will serve to keep them in repair, so to speak. At the time of the event, of course, you will use them as much as you possibly can, and at the same time give your opponent as few chances as possible of attacking your weaknesses. And the knowledge that you have a passable defence for such weaknesses, and can use it with moderate ease, will vastly increase your measure of confidence, whereas the knowledge that in some one point or so you are nearly defenceless would cramp and worry you throughout the set.

Again, since in many cases correctness of striking lies between two opposite faults, it is often useful to practise deliberately the fault which is opposite to your besetting sin. If, for instance, you do not use your wrist enough in a certain stroke, practise using it far more than is in the least advisable; if, on the other hand, you use it too much, not giving the forearm, for instance, its share in the stroke, practise the stroke with the forearm alone, keeping the wrist rigid, and you will often find that you thus attain correctness more quickly than if you had practised correctness. The longest way round, in fact, is here the shortest way home.

It is a great fallacy, as we have said before, to suppose that mere practice makes perfect. Instead of improving, you may be merely ingraining an existing fault; or, again, practice without briskness and without full attention given is only practice in sluggishness, and confirms and strengthens want of concentration. Thus it is always better, if possible, to practise in short spells, and never go on if you find your attention irresistibly flags; for not only is such practice no good, but it encourages slack performance. This inability to attend, which besets almost everyone for a long or short period during a course of training, and is the arch-enemy to progress, is often the result of fatigue, genuine tiredness of muscles or nerves; the eye times a stroke incorrectly, or the overworked muscles are slow to respond. Now this condition should have been avoided; and most people who have suffered from it are perfectly aware that yesterday, or two days ago, they went on with their practice when something, eye, muscle, or nerve, distinctly told them: “We have had enough.” However, here the condition is now, and there is only one remedy—rest. It is a bore, but it is your own fault.

This genuine tiredness must not be confounded with a symptom which certainly it closely resembles in its effects, but which appears to us to be really different, and may be treated with success by an opposite method: the symptom known as staleness. One is not conscious in any way of fatigue, the practice may easily have not been at all excessive, yet for the time all briskness is lost. Now though rest is recommended by many as a remedy for staleness, the opposite treatment—namely, continuance, if not increase of work—is worth a trial; and if one steadily and perseveringly plays through an attack of staleness, one usually emerges from it better than when one went in. It is a point on which trainers disagree, some recommending, as we have said, an emollient treatment—namely, rest; others a tonic. But above all, if you decide, rightly as we think, to play through your staleness, play with all the concentration and briskness you are capable of, and do not lay the foundations of a habit of slackness. Your best efforts, it is true, will produce deplorable results; but if you can harden your resolution to care nothing about the results, and hammer steadfastly along, an object of pity to men and angels, you will probably be the better for it. But if your resolution breaks down, and you relax from the poor best still possible to you, stop at once, for always and always slack practice is worse than none.

Another demon that, like the Promethean vulture, tears at the vitals of the man practising for a special event, or for general improvement, is the apparent slowness of the improvement, and at times its apparent complete cessation. Such a man, for instance, with the best intentions in the world will take out a handful of golf-balls to practise, let us say, mashie shots on to a green. The mashie is a weakness in his game, and the resultant positions of the first dozen shots cannot be covered with the traditional table-cloth. The next dozen perhaps are even less satisfactory, and at this point he will be wise to ask a candid friend if he is doing anything wrong; or, if the candid friend is a good player, to show him half a dozen shots. But it is quite possible that there is no obvious fault at all—only a general weakness. Then, having eliminated that most dangerous possibility—namely, of practising a fault, let this assiduous gentleman go on with his practice as long as he is brisk and attentive, and let him continue it every day for a week. Then, and this is the work of the demon alluded to, he may honestly think that he has not improved at all, and be disposed to label the principle of practice to a hot destination. But we solemnly assure him, if he has the least aptitude for the game, he quite certainly either has improved, though he is not conscious of it, or he has at least by his practice made some necessary steps towards improvement, and this improvement, when it comes, will probably be more rapid than he has thought possible. From being a poor performer with the mashie he will one day suddenly find that the club has arrived; that it has shouldered its way through the other mediocre performers in his bag and now stands predominant. But two postulates are required: (1) that he must be capable of improvement, (2) that he practises correctly.

Now this sounds a cheerful gospel, and will perhaps not be readily believed, especially by the person who is in the habit of telling one after a foozled mashie-shot that he always foozles with a mashie, and by way of showing how persevering he is, does not use the club again throughout the round, but plays improperly with an iron. And here it might be remarked, that though a match at golf certainly does give one practice it is by no means an ideal form of practice, any more than a set of tennis is an ideal form of practice. Indeed, it is even less ideal; for at tennis there is the fact that you are playing against an attacking opponent, to observe whom is no small part of the game, whereas one’s real enemy at golf is not one’s opponent, but one’s own mistakes. Consequently, with the idea of winning the match one studiously avoids such strokes as may land one in such a position as to require the use of a shot which one knows to be weak, whereas in practice one should, instead of avoiding such a shot, do it a dozen times and yet another dozen. That is practice, and it is by such practice alone that the demon of despair is exorcised.

Another rule which applies to practice of all games is that the practiser should gradually increase the severity of his work, in proportion as the stroke becomes easier to him, till, long before his match comes off, he has become accustomed (in games of attack and defence) to meet a much fiercer attack than he is likely to be subjected to, and himself to attack with a ferocity which he will probably not need. This gives him the comfortable feeling during the match itself that he is playing within his limits. So, also, in golf-practice, let him by degrees increase the difficulties he must contend against, and no longer place the ball he wishes to play on to the green in as good a lie as possible, but in a rather bad one; and if his bÊte noir is a hanging ball, let him place for himself—after his initial difficulties are conquered—a dozen balls that hang not badly, but atrociously badly. Such practice as this will diminish his dread of such a hanging ball as he is probably liable to encounter, just because he has been in the habit of playing infinitely more poisonous ones.

Again, it is impossible to emphasize too much the value of the habit of sparing oneself as far as possible. You may be pretty certain that when the event comes off you will need all the nervous and muscular force at your disposal, and it is well to remember that the amount you have is but limited, and that although you have to play as effectively as possible throughout, there are many strokes which can be done with comparatively little effort in one way, but which if done in another are exceedingly tiring. For instance, the correct timing of a ball at tennis, and the bringing forward the weight of the body, using the large muscle areas to back up the arm, will drive a force or a boast with greater velocity than could have been attained by the arm alone, while the contribution towards fatigue and exhaustion thus entailed is infinitely less than if the forearm and wrist were taxed to their utmost.

It is the business of every trainer, and so of every one, for each man is his own trainer to a far greater degree than anyone else can be, to develop his individuality, and though certain broad rules can be laid down about the wrong way to do a thing, and in a less degree the right way, much should be left to natural aptness and facility. For instance, if a man can easily execute a stroke in a certain way with good results, it is impossible to say that such is not the right way for him to do it; for the orthodox “right way” may be very difficult to such a man, and it is mere waste of time for him to acquire it, if by another method he can accomplish the same thing easily. Here everyone can find out a great deal for himself, and since facility in movement is half the secret of success, he should, if he finds a real difficulty in executing some stroke in the prescribed way, carefully look about to see if he has not at his command some other method. It is idle, for instance, for a short, thick-set man to emulate a long loose swing at golf; he might as well practise high jump in order to be able to deliver a service at lawn-tennis from the height at which a taller man can, or practise the “split,” in order to increase his reach. On the other hand, he has assuredly some advantage in his shortness that the long-legged man has not; it is this he must grasp and develop.

Finally, it is probably good for everybody to rest, if not completely, at any rate very largely, for a day or two before the event; for if a man is not fit then, it is highly improbable that a day or two more of severe training and practice will make him fit. On the other hand, rest—provided he does not fret—will largely increase his fund of nervous force, and his muscles already in condition will lose not one atom of their briskness by so short a repose. Again, the danger of over-training is far greater than that of under-training, and the risk of staleness or tiredness on the day of your match is far more likely, and, if it occurs, far more prejudicial to your chances, than the risk of not being quite at concert pitch. But if a man frets, he loses half the benefit that the rest would give him, and if he finds he inevitably does so, it is probably better that he should soothe his jangled nerves by employment. Yet there is a great, if commonly neglected, preventive against fretting, and that is the reasonable employment of the brain during the period of training. Then, when the rest before the event comes, it is easy to find distraction from the very natural nervousness, in mental pursuits, whereas if, as often happens, the period of training has been one of inaction for the brain, except in so far as the training itself was concerned, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to busy the mind with other and intellectual occupations. In fact, if only for the sake of the tranquil, not fretful, rest of the day or two before the event, it is well worth while, throughout the period of training, to have some definite and interesting piece of mental work every day. It should not, of course, be very exciting or very fatiguing, nor should the hours of work be so long that together with the physical preparation they produce fatigue; but nothing is a greater mistake than to drop brain-work altogether, not only, as we have said, for the sake of the rest before the event, which is practicably impossible unless the mind is otherwise occupied, but for the sake of the general flatness and utter want of interest in things after the day is passed. For the mind gets flabby and in ill condition if not used, just as the body does, while its reasonable use even during the most severe physical training cannot, we believe, have any ill effect at all on the body, for it is not in the nature of things that it should have; while if it has been unused for weeks, it is practically impossible to rest, as is strongly recommended, for a few days before the event, without fretting.

There is a sentence in the Latin grammar: “Too much confidence is wont to be a calamity.” This is no doubt true, but it must be remembered that too little confidence is certain to be one; and though to inculcate a frame of mind is perhaps a useless task, yet there is, as it were, a correct attitude for winning, just as a straight bat is the correct attitude for a yorker, and it seems in the main to be this.

Never despise your adversary, but whoever he is treat him with respect. Cultivate a belief in your chances of winning, but remember that though you are not beaten till the last set has been finished, or the eighteenth hole putted into, yet neither is he. Husband your resources, unless things are positively desperate.

And so good luck to you. But if you have bad luck, remember you are a gentleman, or, if you are not, that you have an excellent opportunity for making other people think so.