The golfers and other people who know nothing of St.Andrews are often inclined to fancy that some of the enthusiasm professed by those who have a tolerable golfing acquaintance with it is affected, because it “is the proper thing,” and because it harmonises with the feelings of many revered members of the old school of the game. Perhaps such scepticism is pardonable, particularly when it is known that there have been many hundreds of golfers who have gone to St.Andrews once and failed to be impressed by it, and have not hesitated to declare their doubts about its supremacy on their return to their native links. These people belong to one of three classes. The first is the smallest of the three, consisting of good golfers of sound discrimination, whose idiosyncrasies of taste lead them honestly to the conclusion that St.Andrews is greatly overrated, and that it has superiors in various other greens. The second and largest batch is composed of men who lack both the necessary golfing knowledge and the true golfing spirit. The third consists of those who have not had sufficient time to know, for verily St.Andrews is, to a large extent, a cultivated taste, and there are many worthy golfers to whom The English golfer does not generally love St.Andrews at first sight, but he shows that interest in her which leads him to talk about her and awakens the suspicions of his friends. Then he may speak of her with indifference, but he goes back to her again and again, and at last one day, when he returns to his home after one of these visits, he feels an exquisite soreness at heart, a sweet longing, a strange exaltation, and he knows that a change has come over his golfing life, that he is at last in love with St.Andrews, and that he cannot do without her. Forthwith his plans for future golfing expeditions are changed and modified. He must now always think of St.Andrews. If he is a man of leisure he must go there at least once a year, and even if he has but little time to spare he will be going to Scotland once in a twelvemonth with his bag of clubs, and must so arrange his itinerary that he shall touch Leuchars Junction going or coming, and shall run down that little strip of railway which makes to the golfer the finest travelling in the world, for two or three days of heartening play on the premier links. All golf is good, but there is something subtle about the St.Andrews golf which makes it not quite like the other, and the man who learns to love it, though the love come in his riper years, when the emotions are slow of action and may be weak in result, is faithful to it for the rest of his golfing days. Probably no man has been able completely to And so it comes that the spirit of the game seems to brood over this hallowed spot, and stirs the golfer with fine imaginings and gives to him great impulses. It is all so different from anything else. On the evening of his first day he knows that St.Andrews is not like the other places, and when, after his first rest, he kisses the morning, he is glad and he is exalted, because he is at St.Andrews, and there is not a man or woman in the place who will not talk to him of the game that he loves and sympathise with him in his ardour. The golfer has come home at last. It is difficult to describe the merits of the wonderful old course. It is there. The people who do not know it cannot be made to understand, and the people who do know it have not to be told. It would be hard for anybody to prove that it is not the best, if the severest, test of scientific golf. Nothing but scientific golf will avail the player here. Of late years people have been railing against the bunkers on the course, and the increase thereof; but after all it is to be remembered that the placing of the majority of these bunkers has been the result of the aggregate of thought of some of the best golfers in the world for a period of scores of years, and they must be considered in the spirit that Mr.John Low suggests, that no bunker can really be unfair. It is there to be avoided, and it is the best shot that avoids IIHoylake is new in comparison, but Hoylake is old for England, and it is the leader of golf in the southern section of the kingdom. Hoylake has fine traditions of its own which it would not exchange for those of any other centre or club, and while it has always had the most perfect respect for the dignity and the conservation of the game, it has By some it is said that it was the establishment of the links at Westward Ho! that gave the idea for making a golf course at Hoylake to the Liverpool golfers. Some of the people of West Kirby played there about the middle of the last century, and the Rabbit Warren, as the present links was then called, was used for golf about 1865. The Royal Liverpool Club was established four years later, and for twenty-six years, before the building of its present handsome clubhouse, was housed in the Royal Hotel. In those days the course began on the hotel side, but with the change of residence there was some necessary changing of the order of the holes, the old first becoming the present last, the old second being now numbered the first, and the old last is the present seventeenth. The land of the links is leased from Lord Stanley of Alderley, whose ancestors acquired it in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and it is significant of the increasing richness of Hoylake, due largely to its golf, that the assessment upon the club In the quality of the golfers that it has produced Hoylake can challenge the whole world of golf. It alone has found an amateur winner for the Open Championship—two of them. It bred the inimitable Mr.John Ball, who has six times won the Amateur Championship—1888, 1890, 1892, 1894, 1899, and 1907—and is good enough to win it again; and he won the Open Championship in 1890, thus holding both titles at the same time, being the only golfer who has ever done so, and quite likely who ever will. A brass tablet in the entrance-hall and the clock over the clubhouse commemorate this achievement. Mr.Harold Hilton, winner of the Open Championship in 1892 and 1897, and the amateur event in 1900 and 1901; and Mr.John Graham, junr., one of the finest products of Hoylake, despite his insistence that he is a Scottish golfer when it comes to International rivalry, is now at the top of his game, and is good enough to win one Championship and very nearly another. So true is it that a fine course will breed fine players. Of the quality of Hoylake there can be no two opinions. It is one of the very best courses in the world, and by common consent it and Deal are the two best in England. Hoylake is far better than it looks. The first hole is generally cited as being one of the best two-shot holes to be found anywhere, and it is always good, no matter where the wind is. The course looks easy. If you play thoroughly well it may not be difficult, but if you do not play well it rends your miserable game asunder. What the possibilities for failure are, were exemplified in a grossly exaggerated manner in the final for the St.Andrews and Hoylake—a noble pair! IIIChoosing a companion for a golfing holiday is at all times a serious business, and the light and thoughtless manner in which some young people perform the task is, in the interests of their own future golfing welfare, deplorable. Young people are mentioned advisedly, for you do not find the old golfers making their selections hastily, and they do not live to regret those that they make as do the hot-blooded youths who are swayed by the fancies of a moment. These select at haste, and often enough they repent bitterly before the golfing trip is over. The same nice discrimination should be exercised in the choice of such a companion as would be, or ought to be, in the choice of a wife, and many of the points that have to be taken into consideration are similar. As a general principle, youth should not mate with age for the purposes of many days’ golf in their own exclusive company away from home, when the twain IVThere is an old golfer who says that it cost him many weeks of failure, and many hundreds of pounds, to come by that experience in conducting a golfing holiday as enabled him to make a complete success of such always afterwards. For the benefit of others of the smallest experience, who are liable to err grievously, he offers the following precepts:— “However keen one may be, and however much one may enjoy the excellent golf that is obtained on a good seaside course, it is a great mistake to play too much during a short holiday, and failure to appreciate this fact has completely spoiled more golfing holidays than any other cause. The early keenness is followed by carelessness, and after a while the game becomes somewhat of a taskmaster. Then one’s game suffers severely, and even a strong physical constitution is hardly equal to three rounds a day kept up constantly. Yet that is what many holiday golfers try to do, and when they have finished their vacation they are sick of the mention of golf, and wish they had gone fishing or shooting instead. My advice is never to play more than two rounds a day, and to play no golf at all on two days of the week; whilst, if the holiday lasts a month, the man will be all the better for a four or five days’ rest in the middle of it. He will then enjoy all his golf, and the entire holiday will be much more of a success. “On a holiday course, where there are many visitors, one sees a greater variety of clubs and “As soon as you get on to your holiday seaside course, don’t make the mistake of beginning to play for larger money stakes than you are accustomed to do on your home links, even when you are invited to do so and you may feel it difficult to refuse. Comparatively small beginnings in this direction have a way of developing before the holiday is far advanced into gambling on the game to an extent that the player cannot afford. Apart from this important view of the matter, the pleasure of playing the game is completely ruined. A ball on the match is enough for anybody, no matter what balance he may have at his bank, and in starting a golfing holiday a man will be wise to make up his mind in advance that he will not play for more. “When you are a complete stranger and alone, and you beg the club steward that he will find you matches, do not hesitate when he offers you an opponent, even though the latter’s handicap is either too large or too small to give you the most enjoyable match. Take him on at once, and be thankful. “If you are a long-handicap foozler, make your start for the round either very early in the morning or very late, say nine o’clock or half-past eleven. Either of these times is just as good as half-past ten, and you will miss the crowd, have a clear course, and spare yourself the anxiety of being a constant annoyance to the scratch men behind you if you started at the busy time. You will play a much better game. “At the commencement don’t announce your handicap as either more or less than what it is at home, whatever your views upon the accuracy of the latter may be. If you say your handicap is more than it really is, you are grossly dishonest and a cheat, though some misguided players do so without any full sense of the grave responsibility of their action. On the other hand, many players with the best of motives say they are several strokes less than they really are, for the purpose of seeing what they can really do at a shorter handicap, and thus, as they put it, pull their game out. They also do it with the object of getting better matches, but their sins will find them out. They may very likely lose most of their matches, and their opponents, perhaps, will not care to play with them again, wanting something more to do. Besides, they may run up against some of their own club fellows, and then they may look rather foolish. “Don’t give your newly-made opponent-friend a “Also, don’t make the shocking mistake of discussing with him the play and the manners of other visitors to the course with whom you have been having matches, or whom you have otherwise encountered on the green. It is very bad form, and, besides, after you have been denouncing some person or other, your companion may inform you that he is a friend of his. “Don’t ask permission of your opponent to take your wife or your sister or your mother round the links with you to watch the match, even with the proviso that she shall keep at a convenient distance from you both. Like the good fellow he is sure to be, he will say at once that he will be delighted, and will be most agreeable. But would you be delighted, and would you play your best game in such circumstances? Would not the presence of a lady stranger rather irritate you, however gallant you might desire to be? And what if all the players on the links did this kind of thing? The proper place for ladies who do not play golf is the seashore. “Do please remember that as a visitor to the links, even though you are made a temporary member, you have no right to be there, and are only admitted to the course by the courtesy of the members. This is a point in manners which is “Likewise remember that others who are playing on the course have at least as much right to do so as you, even if in your opinion they do not play such a high-class game as you do. Therefore don’t get into the habit of calling out ‘Fore!’ to the couple in front unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and don’t complain loudly that people who take four putts on the green have no business to come to such good courses and interfere with the play of others. “Assume that your opponent, though you do not know him well, is both a gentleman and a sportsman, as it is extremely likely is the case, and don’t allow any contrary idea to enter your mind unless the evidence in favour of it is overwhelming. Then say nothing about your suspicions, but simply make a convenient excuse when he asks you for another match. “If a point of difficulty occurs in the course of your match, do not squabble with your opponent about the rules or stubbornly maintain your own position against his arguments. It is better to waive your point and even lose a hole than do so. You are unlikely to convince him, and it is quite possible that you yourself are in the wrong. Besides, you will score most “When you are leaving at the end of your holiday, do not forget to tender your best thanks to those to whom they are due. When you get home again don’t tell untruths about the great things you have done while on your holiday. The people to whom you tell them will not believe you. Indeed, you must be very careful as to how you tell the good part of the truth.” VWhen you are one of a special party that sets out for a sojourn at some place, solely for the reason of the golf that it affords, and when in due course, the time having been well and enjoyably spent on the links, your friends determine that they will return home or depart to some other place for golf, do not on any account yield to an impulse to stay behind them, on feeling that you could enjoy still a little more play, and persuading yourself that among the people you know who are staying in the place you may make up good matches. There will be no further enjoyment, for all the days that follow will suffer in comparison with those full ones that were spent when those bosom companions helped to the happiness in every hour. The course will not be the same; there will be a ghostly silence about the rooms of your lodging place, and the atmosphere of the town or village may seem unfriendly or at least indifferent; whereas before, in the independence of your association, you had not cared what it was, but formed a vague impression that the people were pleasantly conspiring On the first morning afterwards it does really seem that all the people who had stayed there had gone also, and not merely the three who had come with you. You breakfast perhaps alone in a vast apartment. The head waiter seems to mix a great sympathy with his attentions, suggesting that he appreciates the loneliness and the misery of your bereavement. Out of this wretched place to the clubhouse, and there is no one there, and the obliging secretary or steward is unable to give any definite information as to the prospects of a morning match. You take out a young professional, and, well though he plays, a poor thing is this match with him in comparison with those that were of the days before, when you knew always the thoughts and fears that were passing through the mind of your opponent, and knew almost as well as your own, the clubs with which he played his shots, and exactly how they did their work. The ghosts of your friends seem to walk in front of you down the fairway leading to every hole, and as you leave the putting green and go forward moodily to the next tee, there is the shadow form of one of them pointing with his club to the exact spot where you remember his ball was teed yesterday, and you feel momentarily a happier man as you think you can see his characteristic swing and the glint of joy that comes into his eyes as he finds he has made the carry that it needed a strong heart to attempt with this wind blowing back from the green. You do not wish to appear inconsiderate, and not to show yourself as a man of proper feeling and a good sportsman in the presence of another who can “I can get a good match for you this afternoon, sir,” says that excellent steward when you go back into the clubhouse. “Oh, thanks very much, Brown,” you say, “but it doesn’t matter. I think I shall go back this afternoon.” And by the afternoon train you go, and as you are whirled along the seashore and through the open country and the tunnels, a first thought is that yesterday at the same time those three merry fellows were running along the same course, and were perhaps seated in that very carriage. They have gained a day on you in everything. Next time, my friends, we will all go back together. VIThe customary classification of our golf courses into the inland and seaside groups is crude and inadequate. Apart from that there are many inland courses, and still more seaside courses, that differ from each other more than some in the one class differ from the others in the second one. The golfer of experience comes subconsciously to put all the courses that he knows well into different groups, those in each group having some distinguishing characteristic that specially appeals to his fancy or One of the foremost of these schools of golf architecture is the Heroic. The name has only to be given, and every golfer of experience knows at once what links he would select as belonging to it—links with a fine length and needing a strong arm and a brave heart for successful play upon them, links which are broad and bold in their characteristics, never easy, and terribly difficult when Nature is in a tantrum mood. There are not so many drive and pitch holes on such courses, and when one is encountered the pitch calls for the most thoughtful golf. There are long, bare, bunkered holes that chill the blood of the nervous golfer as he goes forth from the tee with a glance at the brasseys in his bag. It seems as if he wanders into a vast space, a wilderness A school which has yielded many fine courses is the Romantic. The lights and shades of such courses are in high contrast, and their colouring is rich. Hazards, big and full of character of their own, abound at almost every hole; there are rocks or sandhills everywhere, and likely enough the course is set in a frame of rich scenery surrounding. Some people would describe such courses as being “very sporting.” When one thinks of the Romantic school, and of the great days of adventure that one has spent when paying homage to its dead masters, one thinks of Troon and of North Berwick; and if of this type one must select one that is away from the sea, there is Sunningdale which clearly belongs to it, though its features are not so highly developed. The Braid Hills course is certainly attached to the Romantic school. The architects who were of this school, and the men who most admire their work, are warm-blooded, human players, who like risks and the overcoming of them, and who would have their pulses throb with the joy of life when they play on the links. They like, as it is said, to be called upon to take their lives in their hands at every stroke of their play. This is great golf. As to which of all the schools provides the truest golf it is hard to say, since few men would agree on what is the truest golf. But quite likely the links of the Æsthetic school would be most frequently mentioned in this connection. There has been a subtle art at work in the planning of every hole. The architects have taken their patch of land, and, scorning all convention, have been inspired by great impulses in the selection and arrangement of the line of play. They have had moods and caprices, but they have been men of great genius, born and bred in a high atmosphere of the game. Like all other men of great independence of thought and action, they court and receive severe criticism; but at the end of it all the greatness, the superbness of the work is admitted, and its fame will for ever endure. There is character in it at every glance, but it is not such as is obtrusive, as at Troon. Here there is the perfect art that conceals art, and it is a testimony to its perfection that men go on discussing it for ever and ever, just as they still think and worry over the emotions that passed through the mind of Hamlet, and are not all agreed upon them. How many different readings, as it were, can one not give to a hole at St.Andrews—almost any hole on the old course. St.Andrews is the masterpiece of the Æsthetic school—profound, ingenious, intricate. Here and there we see a little of the influence of the Heroic school; the Romantic has had less. But always the Æsthetic school is a law unto itself, and its finished work is not to be likened to that of any other. Hoylake is of this school, though the example is not so pure and unaffected by the two great rival branches of architectural art as St.Andrews. Nevertheless it is We have another school, which should be called the Victorian. It has many merits, and it is very prolific. It represents a sober and industrious kind of golf, but it is utterly lacking in any inspiration. It is as business like and exact as you please, a six-o’clock-sharp morning-dress kind of golf. It conduces to good habits, and will make some good golfers. But on the whole it is rather prim and dull, and one never feels the blood running in the veins when contemplating it. Muirfield is one of the Victorian school, and there are one or two of the satellites of Hoylake, on its own seaboard, that are of it also. Sandwich has much of the Victorian element in it; but it is redeemed by the strong influence of other schools, as by the extreme romanticism of the Maiden. The suburbs in their own small way went over to Victorianism entirely at the outset, partly because their circumstances exerted such an irresistible tendency in that direction. A drive over one bunker and a pitch over the next one is Victorianism in its crudest form; but perhaps after all the suburbs are lucky in being able to attach themselves to any school. I am told that the Victorian school has had paramount influence in America. VIIOf the links we know, those by the sea, to which do we return for the tenth or the twentieth time joyously as to a delightful friend in a charming home? Instantly we murmur the name of dear North Berwick. The It is the place to conjure up a mental picture of some great events of days gone by, as: It is nearly sixty years ago, and there is tense excitement on the seven-hole course, as it was in those far-off days. A great foursome is being played, and there is £400 at issue. Old Tom and Allan Robertson are on one side, and the Dunns are against them on the other. They have played over two other greens and are even, and now they are to decide. The Dunns have had a great lead, but at the second last hole in the fifth and last round the game is square. Then the Dunns’ ball lodges behind a stone, and the brothers are in a frenzy, and lose their heads in several vain endeavours to extricate it. Old Tom and Allan are dormy, and the £400 goes to them at the last hole. This picture fades away, and another framed in mournful black comes up in its place. Old Tom and VIIIIn many sequestered places there are fine courses that the golfer in general knows little of. Demand of him suddenly that he shall tell you of a far-away seaside links where you may rest and play for a little while until the city calls you back, and by force of habit he will begin to murmur pleasantly about his Carnousties and his Gullanes and all the rest. They are excellent, most excellent; but we call for change, and where for the old wanderer is the change that is good enough? When he appeals to you, send him down in a cab to Paddington, bidding him take a ticket to Porthcawl, changing at Cardiff, for you may know that in the evening he will be happy, and that upon the next day the joy of life will have come again to a weary worker. Porthcawl is a place that rests the man and gives Generally the requirements of the golfer are in inverse ratio to those of the tourist, and it is tolerably safe to predict that when a coast is described as “extremely desolate,” it represents a fine piece of golfing country. It is one of the good things of golf that it has come into our civilisation to use up all utterly barren and waste tracts of coastwise land, and that generally the more barren and waste the better they are for golf. Are not some of the best links there are in Britain situated on coasts that are to the non-golfing mind, uneducated to the beauty and charm of testing, full-blooded and yet scrupulously fair holes, quite naked of all attraction? And what an excellent arrangement of circumstances it is! The neighbourhood of Prestwick is sometimes by way of being “boomed” as a health resort, a place that affords a fine tonic to the lungs, and I believe the claim is well justified; but not all people would describe this spot in Ayrshire as being “interesting,” and there is certainly no kind of relation between the quality of the coast scenery and the inestimable grandeur, from the golfing point of view, of the Cardinal, the Himalayas, and above all of the glorious seventeenth, the Alps. And consider Sandwich. No tourist of discrimination has been seen, or will be, on these reclaimed wastes that have already given us one championship course, and lately a new links, which is of superlative quality. And the “extremely desolate” coast at Porthcawl which did not please our guide-book man, is found on acquaintance to be an excellent example of IXIt is fine golf that is to be had now on Kent’s eastern seaboard, and each time one comes down into this neighbourhood with one’s bag of clubs, the more one is strengthened in the conviction as to its equal excellence with any other golfing district in the world, and the abundance of its fine prospects for the future. The magnificent character of the golf, chiefly Here, then, is a place which is eminently adapted to become a leader among golfing centres, and it would surprise no one if, at an early stage of the further evolution of golf and golfing matters, it came to be regarded as the chief of all. It is not to be overlooked that it enjoys the inestimable advantage of proximity to London. When London takes a fancy to such a thing as golf she likes to be its master, and will leave nothing undone to assert her supremacy. She has taken to golf, and Scotland already knows with what masterful zeal she is pursuing it. These seaside links of eastern Kent are to all intents and purposes London links, in that they are nearer than any other to London, and are fed almost exclusively from the capital. And a further advantage that the place possesses is in the fine bracing air with which it is enveloped, air which for its invigorating properties is hardly to be excelled anywhere in Great Britain. When the wind comes from the south-east with moderate strength, as it so often does down there, it is a fine thing for the golfer, and a stimulant not only to himself but his game. The locality begins to feel, as one might say, like a great golfing centre. You know how St.Andrews and Carnoustie and North Berwick “feel” like that. The intelligent interest of the non-golfing people in the towns and villages round about is being awakened in the game, and they are all discovering in some way or other how they may make themselves to benefit by it. Particularly is this the case with regard to a certain good class of private hotels and boarding-houses catering specially, if not exclusively, for golfers. In all the great centres of the game one finds these places in abundance, and every player of experience knows how, in many respects, they are often to be preferred to the big hotels. Then we find a leading thoroughfare called Golf Road, houses called Golf Villas, establishments named Golf Bakeries and Golf Laundries, all of which little details are a sign that the game is coming to be regarded in the district as an “industry,” and the district is wise in arriving at such an understanding in good time. Moreover, one would be inclined to say that the standard of play down here is at least as high, taking it all round, as it is at any other big golfing centre. There are foozlers on every links, but more men with very short handicaps, men who have really come to grips with the game, are playing round Pegwell Bay than in most parts, chiefly because, whether member or visitor, the expense of playing is considerable, and the play itself is difficult, and the long-handicap men have discovered that there is not much fun in paying high rates for the privilege of spending week-ends in bunker practice. And yet another attribute of the large and important golfing centre does this neighbourhood possess, in the good quality of the caddies which in XWhen you think of it, there is no inconsiderable portion of our golfing lives that is spent in travelling to and from the links that are far from home, by railway and by motor-car, and if one falls into a reflective mood there are many experiences, some curious and some trying, that are to be called to mind in connection with these journeys. On the whole, perhaps, the reflection does not make for much joy, except in the knowledge that these are things of the past and are not likely to be repeated. When the assemblies for the championships are being made, there is less talk of current form than there is of adventures in travelling. Oh, the horrors of a wait at Dumfries in the small hours of a cold morning, when the mistake has been made of trying to get to Prestwick that way! Turned out from the comfortable, warm, snug sleeping-car at Carlisle, even the But generally night-travelling is an excellent thing when you get used to it, and it spares a day to golf. It is a fine thing to pack your bag of clubs away lovingly in your berth after a dinner at the London terminus, and before you turn off the light you look at them and think a “Good-night!” to them in a cheery way as of old and trusted companionship. “Off again, my friends!” you seem to say. “We have done this sort of thing before, eh? We know what we are going to do, you and I, eh? Yes, you are the fellows. Bonny boys, you are! Where? Didn’t you know? Why, North Berwick, of course! Now, bye-bye! Let’s sleep. Play in the morning.” And then you switch off the light, and slip away into dreamland where there are glorious holes on seaside courses, and presently there is a big thump on the door and that dream is spoiled and dispelled by a man’s gruff voice. But the next moment is one of those most worth living. The dream is realised or is in the realisation, for the caller brings you to your joyful senses by declaring that in fifteen more minutes you will be wheeling into Edinburgh. In those dreams which were helped by a soothing lullaby from the wheels below, the London was slipping away four hundred miles from the tail of the train, and here is Golf, its own rare land. And what feats one can perform on a motor-car! And does. Just finished our putts on the home green at St.Andrews, and the sun going down, and up comes one of our impulsive party and says it is ordered that we go to Gullane to-night by car! Goodness! But it has to be, and in half an hour we But it is clear to me that the golfer who wishes to go golfing, and at the same time to live the richest and most adventurous life of the traveller, needs to take himself abroad and roam from course to course in Eastern and Central America. He will encounter The four British golfers found things rather dull for the next two days, for nothing in particular happened while they were running through fifteen hundred miles of woods and prairie. On Saturday morning they got out of the train at SanAntonio, Texas, in time for breakfast, and the same evening they reached Laredo, the Mexican border, where their luggage was examined. Spanish being the prevailing language, this process proved rather troublesome, especially as the officials had varying and peculiar views as to the goods on which duty should be paid. Some of the party had to pay it on their golf clubs, and others escaped. The train had hardly got going again when it was pulled up on account of an obstruction in front, and it was three hours before a further advance was made, the impediment being a freight-train which had run off the track. By this time Kirkaldy was sighing for a ride on the North British, and White was hoping that he might be allowed the privilege of making his last journey on earth on the beautiful South-Western. But there was more adventure to come. The four great British golfers had heard awful tales of Mexicans and what they were capable of, but they understood the place was more civilised now—must be, as there was golf there. In the dead of night, while the famous quartette were wrapped in slumber, when White found himself back on to his drive, when Herd had nothing but good luck for a whole season, when Jones was pipping one Braid for the championship nearly every time, and when the fourth of the party of British golfers was doing a round on the links in XIIA celebrated golfer, being in one of his lighter moods, discussed with me the future association of aeroplanes and golf, and he observed that when the flying machines came they would be such boons and blessings to the golfing fraternity above all others as nobody imagined at the present time. He opined that no sooner did the flying machine become workable and reliable than every golfer who considered himself at all thorough, and took any proper care of his game, would think it his bounden duty to possess one. It would be as necessary to the playing of his true game as the nails in the soles of his boots and shoes, and he would be just as seriously handicapped without the one as the other. This was a startling proposition; but though it was a great exaggeration of an idea, the idea itself was sound, and was based on the wisest and most generally-accepted philosophy. It was submitted that the aeroplane would be very good for golf, inasmuch as it would do less towards putting a man off his game at the beginning of the day than any other form of locomotion from his place of residence to the golf course. It is a disturbing reflection that practically everything that one does in these days that is not golf tends to injure one’s golf. Nothing has ever been discovered that with any consistency and regularity will improve it, except golf; the effect is always adverse, and perhaps this trying jealousy of the game adds something to its general fascination. When a man has risen from his bed in the morning, thoroughly roused himself, and noticed that it is a fine day, he is at his best for golfing. After that all things put him off. Some authorities are very adverse to the cold bath, and others have even said that one’s breakfast ought not to be regarded as an absolutely loyal friend. But it is the journey to the links—with all its delays, irritations, inconveniences, and joltings—that does the most damage. Frequently this journey is a mixture of cabs, omnibuses, and trains. At one point or another you have very likely to run for either the omnibus or the train, and this is certain to do something towards putting you off. It may be only a little, but it is this trifle added to other similar trifles that make up a total sufficient to bring disaster to your driving and putting. If you do not need to run anywhere, you have to wait, and this irritates and does harm. Then the great vibration of the cab and the omnibus most seriously affect the nervous system. The golfer may not be conscious of it, but the effect is there. How true this is may be judged by taking the extreme case of the motor-bicycle. A year or two ago large numbers of golfers who could not afford motor-cars went in for the cheaper kind of machine, but to a man they found them quite fatal to golf, and particularly to their putting, the vibration XIIISome footpaths count for very much in the playing of a hole, and at times call for and produce fine shots that would never be made if there were no path there. So sometimes they are good to the game; but generally they are merely an aggravation. You could hardly call a path or a road famous, but if you were asked which were the most notable you would probably call to mind first of all the path that goes across the first and eighteenth holes at St.Andrews, which is distinguished from others because of the devil-may-care spirit in which the general public The paths and roads of Blackheath are altogether probably responsible for the making of a bigger and more enduring piece of golfing history than any others. Other footways may have despoiled great players of deserved honours, but thus their effects are chiefly destructive, and it cannot be claimed for them that they have made anything for the game. But the Blackheath paths and roads have been XIVHowever humble its merits may be, it is well that a man should be faithful always to his mother course, respectful of her, and that he should not speak and very tardily admit to himself the blemishes of her features. For it is always for him to remember that she, and she alone, gave the game to him that has yielded him so much happiness, and he owes to her a debt that he can never repay, save in constancy and gratitude. Therefore it is to be reckoned as a good thing in a golfer that, wherever the necessities and vicissitudes of life may take him to live, and for whatever other courses he may in mature years find a fondness and become attached to by membership, he should, if he can do it, always remain an associate of his first club, and should from time to time display some public attachment to its course, even though it be at some inconvenience to himself. It is a little act of filial homage that should not be neglected. At such times he will be kind to her and will not chide her for her weaknesses. He will humour her good-naturedly. The sixteenth may be a better hole on another course, but do not say so now. Think how rich did that sixteenth here seem in those far-off days when the teething to the clubs was first being done. What terrors had its bunkers! What a big, lusty, and not to say a brutal one, did it seem then; but now to the time-worn golfer, if the truth must be whispered for once to himself, that old sixteenth seems something of a milksop, and can be played in ten different ways with a half-hearted drive and something of a mashie or iron. How happy we were despite the constant troubles in those olden days, when we were always with our mother links, and knew no others! The old men of golf came and told us of the great courses that they had encountered in their travels—such wonderful holes, such amazing bunkers, such marvellous putting greens! These travellers’ tales were pleasant to listen to, and they fired the imagination; but after all we returned with some content to our mother links. And then, what golfer does not remember the day, particularly if he was then no longer a child in years, when he went away for the first time from that course and paid a visit to one of those celebrated of which so much is written in the books and on which so many fine matches and championships are played? This is always an epoch, and a stirring one in every golfing life. There are many wild emotions in the man when for the first time he takes his club to play a shot on this foreign course of so much renown. If he is an intelligent man, and an impartial one, he sees the merit and the glory, and he admits it without |