Chapter M: A. C

* * * * *

Evans, Edwards, Hutchison, and MacDonald are to play over George Ade’s golf course, for the Red Cross; and it may encourage these excellent players to learn that Messrs. Ade, McCutcheon, Atkinson, and Ye Ed all pitched to the flag on the short hole one day. There was, unfortunately, no gallery.

* * * * *

When we wrote: “None of the golfers were wearing derby hats,” we knew we should start someone. “None are” is good English, and once out of perhaps fifty times we prefer it to “None is.”

FOGGY.

“The ball is played well back off the right toe,”—the St. Andrews run-up is under discussion,—“and the hands are held well in front. This naturally tips the face of the mashie forward, reducing the loft.” Is there any other reason for holding the hands forward except to reduce the loft? If not, why not use midiron or cleek? There is, of course, a reason, but it is not mentioned. We can account for the perfect opacity of golf writers only on the classic theory that language was invented to conceal thought.

* * * * *

Steel shafts are mentioned, since hickory is temporarily scarce; and steel shafts will do as well as wood or concrete for the dub, just as a steel fish rod serves the ignoble purpose of the impaler of worms.

* * * * *

Readers who attach significance to what is termed the fitness of things will be enthralled to learn that Charles E. Ball has been re-elected president of the Tampa Golf Club.

* * * * *

A standard of amateurism is needed in art, says Max Eastman. “We cherish that standard in sport, where it does very little good and quite an amount of harm. It is idealism of a kind, but it is misplaced idealism.” We must agree with Max; indeed, any man whose first name is Max is more than likely to be right. There is Max Beerbohm for one, and Max—— But we digress, as Ulysses remarked when his ship was blown nine points to leeward. What we started to say was, there are two kinds of golfers—gentlemen and gents. The former might be admitted to national tournaments, the latter barred. You know the golfing gent. He has spoiled more than one afternoon for you.

LIFE’S LITTLE MIDIRONIES.

To aim at the southern hemisphere of the ball, and then hit it above the equator.

_You may break, you may shatter the state if you will,_
_But the golfer who won it will gab of it still._

Putting, Mashie and Midiron.

PUTTING.

I.

Putting is probably the favorite feature of indoor golf, but very few persons who are practising it have any notion of what they are about. Statistics, especially those that are known as reliable (as George Birmingham says), show that of eighty-six longish putts, forty-one go to the right of the hole and thirty-nine to the left; the remaining six, by great good fortune, fall into the cup. The fortunate play is always heartily congratulated.

Champ or dub, pro or amateur, hardly any one putts accurately seven days in the week. For that reason a great mystery is made about it. It is said that putting, the simplest and most important part of the game, cannot be taught, and the statement is true to this extent, that a man cannot teach something that he hasn’t reasoned out and come to understand. Professional coachers scoff at “book learning” (that is, those who haven’t written books on the game); but all of consequence that is known in this world was learned from books. You don’t really know a thing until you have taken it apart and linked it together again. You can do this with any stroke in golf. And your stroke is as strong as its weakest link.

You remember that glorious Thursday (shall you or your friends ever forget it?) when you were putting in wonderful form; you holed a number of long ones and laid the others dead. But Friday! If the hole had been big enough to bury a dog in you would have missed it. Now, a happy-go-lucky method that embraces such a variation is no method at all. The difference between your Thursdays and Fridays should be a matter of inches, not a matter of feet. What you require is a method of taking the putter back and bringing it forward, that shall, on your bad days, keep the ball somewhere near the line. Your putt must be as nearly as possible automatic, not temperamental. If this cannot be taught the fault is with the instructor.

When you drive from the tee for a distant flag, it doesn’t matter if you are ten feet off the line, nor need your second shot give you too much concern. When you come to pitch or run up to the green the margin of error shrinks. Once on the green it disappears; accuracy is now demanded. Yet on every green one sees putts of a few inches fluffed, a putt of two feet is studied with great care, while a six foot putt is gone about as gravely as an operation for appendicitis, and much less expeditiously.

II.

Place the ball twelve inches from the hole. This putt has been missed, although I cannot understand how—unless the player was stricken with paralysis at the moment of moving his club, or was intoxicated, and, seeing two balls, played the wrong one. There are, of course, persons with so poor an eye that, when they try to throw coal into a furnace, they strike the outside of the furnace two inches below the fuel door. But paralytics, heavy drinkers, and cross-eyed persons will never become accurate putters, so we may dismiss them from consideration; we may also dismiss the twelve-inch putt as unmissable. Now place the ball two feet from the hole. This putt can be foozled, and the easiest way to achieve that absurdity is to putt with the arms. Many players putt with the arms, perfectly still, and putt very well—on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On the alternate days they are what is called off their game, and in such cases it is usual to ascribe the unhappy conditions to an inscrutable providence and not to a fault in the method of taking back the club. It is agreed, I assume, that the putter should be taken straight back on the line of the hole, and it is difficult to do this with the arms, stiff or relaxed, as half an inch on either side of the line means inaccuracy. A man might learn to do this with practising constantly for ten years. But then he would have to spend fifteen years learning to bring the putter back in the same line, which is even more difficult. One can take a flat swing with the club around his right leg and run the ball to the hole—but only on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday; and he might have to play a match on Friday.

There is no accounting for the tastes of golfers, and it may be that for many of them the very uncertainty in erratic putting may be one of the game’s attractions. Those persons are advised to putt with their arms, and if a wider margin of error is desired it can be obtained by letting the right hand turn over when the ball is tapped. If an even more brilliant result is wished for, the player may stand well back from the ball, with legs spread wide. In this attitude he can miss the rim of a cistern.

III.

Man’s arms have always been of great service to him. In the arboreal age they helped him swing from tree to tree. Later they were useful for transporting Christmas bundles, embracing the lady of his choice, making political speeches, and so on. But man’s arms were never designed for putting; this is work for the wrists. These are well-oiled hinges, easily controlled; they can be trained to work almost automatically; they can brush a ball a few inches or they can flick it a hundred yards; they can caress or smite. Even in the long drive it is the turn of the wrists that puts the pace on the ball. When professional coaches play they play with the wrists; when they instruct the novice they spend their time telling him how to wave his arms. There are a few exceptions.

Let us return to the ball, as the novelist “returns to his story.” We left it two feet from the hole. To propel it so that it will strike the back of the cup it is necessary to take the putter straight back. Stand as close to the ball as the lie of the putter allows. Face as you please; it pleases me to face along a line at an angle of forty-five degrees. Having soled the club, anchor your elbows to your body, and don’t weigh anchor for an instant. You can take the club back along the extension of the imaginary line between the ball and the hole by bending, not turning, the wrists, but there is lack of freedom. You can also take it back by turning the left wrist inward, as in the full iron shot, but the clubhead will leave the line. A third way remains—to violate one of the best rules of golf and turn the left wrist outward. The turn must be decided and it suffices to lift the putter and keep it on the line. Make the turn slowly and let the clubhead swing forward smoothly.

Concerning the putt of greater length than three or four feet, I am not disposed to be dogmatic or ride a theory to death; besides, I should inevitably collide with that nebular hypothesis of golf known as “the feel of the club.” But for a yard putt I don’t care how the club feels if I can keep the ball on a straight line to the hole. O’Neill refuses to subscribe entirely to my method. He flatters me by saying I can putt any fashion. Even if this were true, which it is not, I can putt best in the way indicated.

IV.

Don’t look at the ball! Nothing is more fatal to consistent accurate putting than the habit of looking at the ball. The fact that many persons who do look at it putt very well, and often brilliantly, merely proves that man is a patient and persistent animal, and can overcome almost any obstacle. I am aware that “keeping the eye on the ball” is regarded as a virtue; the agreement on this point is pathetic. But I have found in jogging through this world, that oftentimes a piece of advice works very well if it is turned upside down. I never could see any good reason for falling in a trance over a ball before putting it, and I suspect that this is one of the theories which work well when reversed.

To draw, freehand, a straight line from A to B do you look at A? No, you look at B. Does a billiard player look at the cue ball when making a shot? No: having taken his “stance” and made his calculations, he fixes his eye on the object ball. Billiards is played with the wrists, and the cue is taken back automatically, as a putter should be; and so you will never master the art of putting until you swing your club as unconsciously as you move your arm in tossing nuts to a squirrel, or pitching a quoit or doing a number of other things of a similar nature.

Looking _up from_ the ball is fatal; your head moves. Looking _at_ the hole is not; your head remains still. Take your line carefully and as deliberately as you please, and, having soled your club, fix your attention on the hole, and _don’t look back at the ball_.

V.

For the benefit of golfiacs who depend exclusively on this department for hope and inspiration we are “able to say” that poor putting is due, in great measure, to the foolish notion that “perfect golf” allows two putts to the green. A putt from any part of the green that does not sink is an unsuccessful putt, and no amount of self-delusion can make it otherwise. Hardly anybody tries to hole a long putt; the player is satisfied with “laying it dead”; if it stops within two feet of the hole he is tickled pink, and his companions congratulate him, saying, “Very good, Eddie! That’s laying ’em up!” He ought to know—and we take pleasure in telling him—that the only good putt is the putt that sinks, and that he will never, except by accident, sink a long putt if he continues to cherish the delusion that “laying ’em dead” is good putting.

In a word, an “approach” putt that fails to drop is really a re-proach. The word approach should be eliminated from the game and pin or hole substituted.

THE MASHIE.

I.

The difference between a putter and a mashie is that the face of one is straight and the face of the other is laid back. For short pitches you take the mashie back in the same way that you move the putter, and with a mere turn of the wrist you “chip” the ball toward the hole. It is assumed that tall grass or rough turf lies between, for no sensible person will run up over smooth turf with a mashie when he can use a midiron or cleek—unless he has deluded himself for years with the notion that the difference between one club and another is more than a difference of weight and loft. The over-use of the mashie is generally due to cowardice; the lofted face promises to get the ball up, and it frequently does.

This timidity is due to the moss-grown tradition that it is essential to “keep your eye on the ball.” Now when a man can repeatedly top a ball that he is looking steadily at, it ought eventually to dawn on him, as it dawned on me, that looking at the ball is one of the causes of topping. I don’t recall ever having topped a croquet ball, or ever having given a thought to the swing of the mallet. Having taken aim, one looks at the wicket and strikes the ball; that’s all there is to it. So in golf. When you want distance you look at the ball, because you are going to “soak” it; but when direction or delicacy of stroke are wanted, you look at the hole, or at that spot on the green where you design to drop the ball.

You stand very “open,” with your right foot well advanced and your right elbow anchored to your hip; you let the club swing on the hinge of your wrists—straight back and straight forward—and when you reach the ball you flick it sharply or gently, as the distance may require. A child that never pitched ball can do this. A man who has devoted years to glaring at the ball will have some difficulty at first, because perfect relaxation is possible only when your attention is on the flag.

II.

For straightaway work (and that is all that need concern the inexperienced player) the mashie can do nothing that the midiron cannot do, except to put the ball higher in the air and more at the mercy of the wind. Yet, when the average golfer gets within a hundred and fifty yards of a green out comes his mashie, and one of two things happens: if the ball is half topped it goes to perdition; if it is hit clean it drops short of the green. A lower flying ball would have reached the green or passed it. But “many are called and few get up.”

Of ten players, nine overswing with all the irons, and especially with the mashie. Now, a mashie, like a cheap piano, cannot be forced by the average player without disastrous results. A very skilful player can force a club in an emergency, but if he were to force it at all times he would soon cease to be a very skilful player. I know of no holes that call for a long shot with a mashie. If you find yourself one hundred and fifty or more yards from a green, and the ball has to be dropped dead, that is both your misfortune and your fault; your previous shots were short.

If, in the back-swing, your mashie passes the perpendicular, and your wrists are carried higher than your equator, you are forcing the stroke. Even if you are in the predicament referred to, and have to have a long ball, it is better to do the forcing with your wrists and forearms than to wrap the club around your neck. As to where you should look while executing the shot, I find that the pleasantest results are obtained by letting the eyes follow the ball. You don’t lift your head or shoulders to do this; you merely roll your head, and your eyes follow the entire flight of the ball. Nothing is gained, and something is risked, by staring at the ground after the bird has flown.

THE MIDIRON.

Before continuing these illuminating remarks on golf, it might be well to echo the warning of Andrew Lang in an introduction to an edition of Walton’s Angler. “If there are any facts in this book,” he said in effect, “they got in by accident.” This being understood, we may proceed to consider that indispensable tool, the midiron.

The most satisfying shot in golf would be the drive, if you drove well every day; but all the circumstances of this stroke are not always within your control; on the off days driving is something that, since it must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. But the short shot with the iron, up to, say, seventy-five yards, is, next to putting (which is as simple as beanbag), the easiest thing to do imaginable. You need to keep but two things in mind: first, you must lay the right elbow against the side and take the club back with the wrists and forearms; second, you must finish the stroke with the knuckles of the right hand underneath. This in itself insures the clubhead being carried through on the line. When this has become automatic you may add the crowning touch—finishing with the clubhead very low, the blade laid flat, and your arms perfectly straight and pointed at the flag.

Don’t look at the ground after the ball is gone. Let everything follow it,—club, arms, eyes and body. A very good plan is to practise the shot with eyes on the flag. When you discover that you can hit a ball without looking at it you will have no trouble in looking at it when the occasion requires.

And this, in a word, is what I have been driving at, that you cannot play golf easily, gracefully and accurately until you have lost all fear of the ball and have got rid of the notion that keeping your eye on it is the fundamental principle of the game. Almost any professional will tell you that it is not looking at the ball that enables you to drive two hundred yards; it is keeping your shoulders in one plane throughout the stroke.

A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO

_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.

Hope springs eternal in the human jar;
Man never is, but always to be par.

* * * * *

“Let firmness combined with ease be your motto,” advises George O’Neil. Or, as Horace suggested to Maecenas, on the links of Ancient Rome, “Otium cum dignitate.”

* * * * *

Woman’s place, as Socrates said, is in the home. One of her appeared on a public golf course yesterday in so transparent a skirt that four members of a foursome topped their approach shots, and one of them left his ball on the green.

* * * * *

Golf would be a perfect game if it were not for the golf gabble; and this must be accepted as inevitable. If a person who is conscious of the absurdity of golf gabble is unable to quit it, how hopeless is the case of the unconscious gabbler.

Here’s an example of it: We bring off a good iron shot, and instead of ascribing it (silently) to chance or happy circumstance, we must announce to our companion that at last we have solved the secret of the iron shot. And so we gabble our way around the course, till the sound of our own voice is wearisome to our own ears.

It’s a Scotch game. We borrowed it from the Scotch, but we added the gabble.

* * * * *

Olds Grant Rice and Bill Hammond of the N. Y. Mail and Sun respectively came out and golfed with ye Scribe. Grant is a regular player, but Bill is kind of irregular.

* * * * *

The Saturday Review says that the fascination of golf is understandable, but “the wicked hate of the non-player is less easy to grasp.” Nobody objects to the game itself; it is the incessant gabble about it that bores one to tears. Tie a non-player to a bench in the locker room of any golf club and he would go mad within the hour.

Golf is a gabby game because it is so stuffed with ifs—“if I hadn’t hooked,” “if I hadn’t looked up,” “if the ball hadn’t hit the bunker,” etc. And it is all a great waste of breath, nobody is interested in your “ifs,” not even the man you are playing with.

* * * * *

Hon. Brand Whitlock, staff correspondent for the _Line_ at Brussels, advises us that there is a good golf course there, and that the Flemish caddies touch their caps politely and do not seek to draw players into intimate and animated conversation.

* * * * *

In Wilmette, we gather, the goats are those who play golf on Sunday, and the sheep are those who go to church. This classification is flattering to neither flock.

* * * * *

Curious golfers who may follow the learned arguments on “what constitutes a good hole” must conclude that the purpose of the architects is not to make the game easy for democracy. Par figures mean nothing to the average player; they are for the few gifted beings who participate in national tournaments. As courses are now laid out, there is a “short way to the green,” calling at the outset for a carry of, say, 190 yards. The next thing will be to station a policeman at the bunker, to chase off the course a player so unlucky as not to carry the hazard.

* * * * *

“Golf is the pastime of small men with large incomes, who are too old to play tennis and too dull to talk to women.”—WALTER PRITCHARD EATON.

It is also the pastime of large men with small incomes, who vary golf with tennis, and who are too busy to hang around a samovar discoursing the drayma.

To be entirely fair to Mr. Eaton (although one is under no compulsion to be fair to a dramatic critic), he put the sniffy remarks about golf into the mouth of one of his short-story characters. Tennis players should not scorn Golf. We have discovered that playing golf improves our tennis game at least fifty percent. Golf compels deliberation in striking; and waiting for a tennis ball, instead of leaping at it, is the secrecy of accuracy; not to mention the turn of wrist when the racquet (or golf ball) is taken back. This is what keeps the tennis ball out of the net and the golf ball out of the rough.

* * * * *

Of course you know that Lady Brassie is a champion golf player in England.

* * * * *

A golfer in Rockland, Me., has a cat which chases the ball and sits by it until the player arrives. This is interesting chiefly as being the solitary reason for a cat’s existence.

* * * * *

“Each caddy should be at his ball by the time the player arrives.”—Indian Hill note.

But what happens is: “Hurry up, kid! I’ve found the ball.”

ON THE STYXVILLE GOLF LINKS.

“Bozzy,” chuckled Dr. Samuel Johnson, “you were but a novice at the game.”

The amiable lexicographer teed off on the links of the Styxville Golf Club and he and Boswell, his caddie, leisurely followed the ball.

“Yes, Bozzy,” continued Dr. Johnson, “I used to think you the most enterprising press agent that ever tooted a horn, but when I compare your work with the twentieth century article I am convinced that you were the merest alphabetarian.”

“I put down everything that happened,” said Boswell, humbly.

“Pooh, pooh! A press agent who publishes only what has happened would starve to death these days. But I have you even on that count. How about the time I lost my pantaloons and was too late at the Cheshire Cheese. Not a word about it in your celebrated ‘Life of Johnson.’ By the way, what became of the ball? Did you keep your eye on it?”

Boswell located the gutta percha and remarked that he considered the loss of his patron’s unmentionables too trivial an item for a dignified biography.

“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, relapsing into his ancient stilted manner, “you are an unconscionable blockhead. When, not long ago Booth Tarkington lost his trousers a great ado was made by the press agent and the papers were full of it. ’Twas not half so good a tale as mine. You might have scribbled a whole chapter about it. Dick Steele made an excellent jest on the matter and Noll Goldsmith a set of verses, Davy Garrick gagged his lines with it and put the house in an uproar. Give me the cleek.”

Leaning on the club he gazed at his abashed biographer with a twinkling eye.

“Nay, Bozzy, you were a very good press agent for our day, but you would not stand much show if you were on earth to-day. Tarkington wouldn’t keep you a week. You couldn’t caddie five minutes for Irving Bacheller or Ham Garland, or Hop Smith, or any other modern man of letters. Boz, you’re a back number.”

* * * * *

Golfers, especially those addicted to slicing, will approve a plan to pasture sheep in the rough and on the crest of bunkers. A well cropped rough will take much of the gloom out of their zigzag operations.

GOLF AND GRUEL.

Why are golf matches referred to as “gruelling contests?”

—IGNORAMUS.

Golf and gruel are both Scotch, and as inseparably associated as kilts and bagpipes.

THE LAY OF THE LAST GOLFER.

Come, Winter, come, and free me from the thrall
Of Golf! Bestrew the lureful links with snow:
For they that are condemned to chase the ball
Are hopeless as the Person with the Hoe.

Midsummer form is gone, nor all my play
Can win it back to cancel half a stroke;
The driver’s off, the brassie’s had its day,
The mashie’s blown, my putting is a joke.

And yet I chase the ball around the lot
(He needs must whom the golfing devil drives),
Hoping I may—but knowing well I’ll not—
Pull off a brilliant string of fours and fives.

Sound, Winter, then, “the trumpets of the sky,”
Lock up the links and throw away the key;
Else, like a self-doomed Sisyphus, must I
Pursue this foolish game from tee to tee.

WHY INDEED?

Short colloquy on a street car:

“Why the hell don’t you go to war instead of carrying golf clubs?”

“Why the hell don’t you go to war yourself?”

* * * * *

A Philadelphia golfer gets on the First Page for playing 144 holes of golf in one day. But this is by no means a record. It was tied by Slason Thompson of Old Elm, who was far from considering it a remarkable feat. It would be much more noteworthy if the Philadelphia person should eat 144 pies between sun-up and sun-down.

WINTER GOLF.

“All the benefits of outdoors winter golf in the tropics, at the Indoor Golf School.”—AD.

Within the grimy Loop’s environs,
The rubber pill may be addressed,
A man may swing his golfing irons,
And let his fancy do the rest.

The murmur in the street below,
The elevated’s boom and roar,
Will sound—if fancy have it so—
Like surf upon a tropic shore.

The air within the driving stall
Does not suggest a Stilton cheese,
To one whose mind is on the ball
’Tis fragrant as a tropic breeze.

We, upon whom the spell is laid,
For tropic things care not a whoop,
Imagination’s artful aid
Will bring the tropics to the Loop.

The sun, the breeze, the fields, the rest—
Of them let railway folders sing.
We know, who are by golf obsessed,
The Pill’s the thing! the Pill’s the thing.

* * * * *

“Pairfect,” said Mr. Joe MacMorran, when we indulged him in the pleasure of watching us swing a golf club. “The swing is pairfect. All ye need is control.” Or, as the distinguished Kansan said of hell and western Kansas, all that either place needs is water and good society.

* * * * *

During a golf match at Greenwich this week an approach by Vardon was so strong that the ball passed the green and hit a lady on the bounce, recoiling to the flag. “Some back spin!” cried another spectator.

THE PROPER SPIRIT.

Sir: I am resolved to essay the game of golf again after having yielded to discouragement for a season. But now I am fired by a new ambition. Reason has taught me that the greater the number of swats I can get at the pill the more I get for my money. This attribute of mind will enable me to preserve an even temper and measurably reduce (or reduce measurably) my output of rude language. I shall welcome on the bunkers or elsewhere the theory that I am better off where I am than where I’m going next. If I can get a hundred wallops in a round I get more fun and exercise than my friend who finishes in eighty, and is chesty about it.

MIKE.

* * * * *

“Have we too many golf clubs?” inquires the valued Post. It has always seemed so to us. We usually get around with a driver and a putter—one drive to the green and one putt to the hole.

OUR VILLAGE.

A well worn golf pencil was picked up by your correspondent. What scores it could tell of.

Brand Whitlock writes from St. Andrews that he had a fine time on the most famous links in the world, he especially enjoying the Scotch of the caddies.

In the great fourth-estate golf tournament, Old Pop Wells and Ye Ed qualified as captains of canal boats. We out-cussed Pop on the first round, but he more than evened things up on the second, we being two down at the end.

Ye scribe shot a game of golf with Chick Evans, who allowed that our clubs, bag, shoes, and hat are all o.k., and that all we need is a little skill.

Many are complaining that the golf season is at a conclusion; but, as the native at Lake George said, Hell, did you think it was going to be summer all the time?

The frost is on the niblick and the putter’s in the shock. When a man has to play in a couple of undershirts, flannel shirt, sweater, paper vest, and a mackinaw coat, it is time to hang up the fiddle and the bow, for as a fellow said, hownl can you play if you can’t follow through?

Ed Beck and Homer Chandler, accompanied occasionally by their wives, are motoring through the effete east, tearing up the golf courses en route.

* * * * *

Mr. Jack Hoag, for whose golfic opinions we entertain unmitigated respect, writes that “to hit a ball with a wooden club with the wrists loose is to have a feeling that the club itself is stopped when the ball is hit.” Therefore he advises tightening the grip at the impact. It pains us to differ with Mr. Hoag. A golf ball opposes to the clubhead hardly more resistance than a puff ball, as two minutes experimenting will show. Sounder advice, we think, is this: grip loosely or grip tightly, but never change throughout the stroke.

* * * * *

The mother of Hamilton Post, the golfer, was a Miss Stump; the wedding took place in Garrett Woods’ chapel, and the clergyman was Dr. Bockwood. Pass the matches.

FIRST AID TO THE GOLF DUB.

A prominent dub said to us one day: “I’ve taken a good many lessons, and every line of instruction I’ve received sounds perfectly foolish.”

Obviously, the instruction is at fault, for, next to rolling off a log, there is nothing easier than driving a ball with, say, a midiron.

Take a box of balls and an iron, and station yourself a short distance from a putting green. Lay the club on the ground; you won’t need it for ten minutes or so. Now, with your right hand pitch the balls, one by one, at the flag just as you would pitch an indoor baseball, or throw a bowling ball down an alley—underhand. The only difference between this motion and the golf stroke is that in the bowling “address” you face the pins, whereas in golf your left side is toward the pin. Hence the turn of the body.

After you have chucked the dozen balls, you will discover, if you are not utterly imbecile, two or three things: you can’t chuck the ball underhand when your right hand is shoulder high; the arm must come down first; your body has come part way round and your left hip has gone forward; and, of chief importance, the knuckles of your hand are underneath when the ball is dispatched.

Precisely the same motions are gone through with when you use the midiron. If, after half an hour’s practice, with or without the club, you can’t acquire the knack, you had better quit. You are hopeless.

We have a few remarks to make about the iron shots.

The two things sought for are distance and direction. Concerning the first we have nothing at present to offer; our conclusions have not yet jelled.

Direction is a simpler matter. Accuracy in approaching and good direction in longer shots may be acquired by the simple expedient of relaxing the grip of the right hand after the ball is struck—relaxing it, not slightly, but completely; the fingers barely retaining a hold on the club. Most duffers pull or drag all their iron shots away to the left of the flag; letting go with the right hand will remedy this. The left hand, the grip of which is constant throughout the stroke, goes merrily on its way, uncrumpled, unhampered and unchecked.

* * * * *

One can, at will, pull or slice a golf ball around a bunker or other obstruction, and we should think it possible to rifle a cannon in such a way that a round shell could be shot around a corner.

* * * * *

State convicts are to be employed on the public roads of Illinois. This will be good for the roads, and as good as golf for the convicts, as the work will “take them out in the open air.” And it is a more pleasant sight to watch a man mending a road than to watch a dub golfer ruining the turf of a fairgreen.

* * * * *

Cannery! Special delivery! “Playing superlative golf.”

* * * * *

The star player of Greenwich Golf Club is Mr. Topping, who may be related to F. Dub, whose name we saw once in an account of a golf match.

* * * * *

When, on a Saturday you have bought a golf club or tennis racket in a department store, has it occurred to you that the clerk who sold you the things would like to be setting forth that afternoon, like yourself, for a turn on the links, or in the park? It has? Then you are more thoughtful than some people.

SUNDAY GOLF.

There is Sunday golf at Onwentsia now, in the afternoon; the forenoon, which is the better half of the day, is set apart for church-going. A considerable time ago a well known pastor announced that if the members of a certain golf club would not come to the gospel he would take the gospel to the golfers, but, so far as we remember, no services were held at the home tee. “The better the day, the better the deed,” does not hold true of golf. As a friend jingles it—

“O, wad some power
The giftie gie us
To ken the days
The Lord be wie us!”

THE GAME IN STAGELAND.

Mr. Collins, the dramatic reviewer of the Chicago Evening Post, has recently taken up the r. and a. g.; consequently his critical eye is cast upon characters in plays who are introduced in golfing regalia. He reports to us two interesting discoveries to date. In “Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath,” the contents of the golf bag consist of three brassies and four putters, and in “Good Bye, Boys,” the bag holds two drivers and a midiron. It is scarcely necessary to say that the realistic Mr. Belasco is not connected with either production.

* * * * *

Discovered again, the meanest man. Playing in a game that called for a penny a stroke, the pot to go to the Red Cross, he lifted when he pitched into a bunker, and conceded the hole.

FIRST AID.

A Goop writes: “What is good for sclaffing?”

(Reply: Any smooth piece of turf. Do not attempt to sclaff in tall grass, as the club might break on a concealed stone.)

Sherlock writes: “I look at the ball, but I top it just the same. What do you make of that, Watson?”

(Reply: Very likely you look at the ball with your left eye, instead of your right. The right eye, being farther from the ball, can see farther under it. The cleanest hitter we know has a left eye of glass.)

Moron writes: “I am a chronic slicer; so desperate is my disease, I have to allow for the slice on every shot, even in practice swings. Can anything be done?”

(Reply: Cut out meats, eat plenty of green vegetables, and take long walks in the open air—which is really the most convenient place for long walks. Report to us again in three years.)

Fluff writes: “With a strong wind blowing from east to west, should I slice or pull?”

(Reply: You neglect to say whether you are going north or south. If you are going south, pray give our regards to the bunch at Belleair.)

* * * * *

A valued reader, Mr. D. Precox, writes us that, after testing a suggestion we advanced in March, he perfectly agrees that topping is invited by regarding the ball with the left eye, but discouraged by regarding it with the right. “Unfortunately,” he communicates, “my left eye is not of glass, like your cleanest hitter’s, nor can I break it of the habit of looking at the ball. In these critical circumstances what would you advise?” We can only refer Mr. Precox to the best of authorities. If his left eye offends him, let him pluck it out. No sacrifice is too great. What is an eye more or less when a perfect pitch to the pin is demanded?

BULWER LYTTON ON GOLF.

In hands of golfing men entirely great
The swing is mightier than the club.

* * * * *

“I ask your indulgence, gentlemen,” said the new President of the U. S. G. A., “if I make any mistakes in my more or less ignorance of parliamentary procedure.” Our advice to President Perrin is that he take a niblick when he gets into trouble. There is nothing better for quelling a cantankerous delegate.

THE PENDULUM PUTT.

As we find the theories of others are more diverting than our own, which are merely scientific, we shall but seldom intrude an opinion, and then only for the purpose of adding to the general confusion. Thus we may take this occasion to record that the so-called Pendulum Putt is an overpraised institution. Any man, or almost any man, may become a grandfather, but no man can be grandfather’s clock; a tall clock has no nerves and no muscles, and it lives a quiet, regular life. The Pendulum Putt is not more inevitable than another. In our laboratory experiments we have putted in every language, including the Scandinavian and Profane, and have found that the hole can be missed as easily by one method as by another. The least attractive style is that which requires a consideration of their navels (known in California as “sunkist navels”), and a strict adherence of the putter blade to the line o’ flight. The method we finally adopted does not require that the putter be taken back or brought forward on any invariable, ineluctable line; any line, within reason, will do. That decided on, putting ceased to be as troublesome as a hair shirt, and we now approach the green sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, instead of like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon.

* * * * *

Mr. Chick Evans drove two or three dozen golf balls into the west wind once for our special delectation, and golf dubs will be glad to learn that after analyzing Mr. Chick’s stroke we concluded that the great secret of golf and the only secret, is rhythm. Mr. Chick’s rhythm is perfect. The morning stars have nothing on him.

ON THE FIRING LINE.

At thought of what may hap to-day
I’m not disturbed a bit;
And who may triumph in the fray
Perplexes me no whit.

The doings in Convention hall
Afford me no concern;
I do not speculate at all
On how the tide will turn.

I ask not who may hit or miss,
Who perish, who survive:
The thing that bothers me is this—
_Why did I hook that drive?_

GOLFING WISDOM FROM THE ANCIENTS.

Where there’s a will there’s no sway.

SIMPLIFIED SPORT.

Sir: A golfing friend of mine was telling a friend, not a golfer, how difficult it was to play over the ditch on our course. The party of the second part said, “Why don’t they fill up the ditch?”

A. H. R.

Waterloo, Ia.

(Your party of the second part is evidently related to the old lady who, watching a tennis game, asks, “Why don’t they take down the net?”)

* * * * *

The new professional at our club is Mr. Al Falfa, winner of last year’s open, when he pitched a ton of hay in six forks under par. Mr. Falfa uses the closed stance in pitching, as he believes it facilitates the follow-through. In hoeing, however, he inclines to a square stance, the feet being close together. As adviser to the greens committee, he advocates dandelions and dock as being superior to spinach. As a majority of our club is going in for gardening, the new pro’s teaching time is already filled.

QUAD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM.

At Old Elm last fall we were knocking around in a foursome, one member of which was a visitor from the east. We paired with him, but he was unaware of the singular honor accorded him. After apologizing for missing a short putt, he confided to us that his putting had been ruined by his following the advice of a writer in some golf magazine, who advocated looking at the hole instead of the ball. “If ever I meet that chap,” said he, “I’ll take a niblick to him.” As we dislike violent scenes, we did not enlighten the gentleman.

Quite otherwise the case of Old Al Dennis of Skokie, whom we persuaded to give the theory a trial. For several seasons he has looked at the hole while putting, and is wholly satisfied with the result. Why wake him up?

Of 365 persons who use the expression “the psychology of golf,” 365 know nothing of psychology, and 273 can spell the word. As it happens, one of our friends is a distinguished psychologist and something of a golfer, and our conversations have been more or less illuminating. We may report some of them in this incomparable department of uplift.

* * * * *

Mr. Punch gives us a picture of a golfer subduing a burglar with a cleek, and Mr. Fox shows us a golfer pitching coals into his furnace with a mashie. So perhaps the missus will admit that the game is not an utter waste of time.

* * * * *

Mr. Varden’s game is a drive, a mashie, and a couple of putts. Thanks to temperament and years of practice, he has concentration and perfect control of his muscles. Self-control is nearly all of golf, and few people play seventies because few people possess self-control.

We do not envy the man with the vegetable temperament. The man we envy is the man with the nervous temperament, who has acquired control of himself. He may not live so long as the vegetable person, but while he is living he is living.

* * * * *

Considerable golfer, Mr. Ouimet. Or is it pronounced Ouimet?

* * * * *

About this “perfect golf” or “faultless golf” that figures so frequently in the accounts of matches. It isn’t. For if a par four, allowing two putts, is perfect golf, one under par would be “more perfect.” One under par—one putt on each green—would be perfect golf, and this is accomplished by good players frequently and by ordinary players occasionally.

* * * * *

They have been playing golf at Bayside for the Mary Garden cup. Another clever substitute for losing one’s jewels.

* * * * *

Mr. Darwin, who knows how to play golf as well as how to write about it, has pleasantly but plainly indicated that there is a difference between a real golf course and the usual links to be found hereabouts. Any course on which a player can slice or hook badly without penalty is fit only for lady golfers or for males who are content to slop around in ninety-something with nothing worthier in view than winning a “syndicate” from two or three other dubbers.

* * * * *

Anybody can drive a golf ball a considerable distance, but not every one can drive in a straight line. The man who CAN do it should be rewarded with a good lie for his second. The man who can’t should experience the terrors of the pit and the jungle. After a season of continuous punishment he may do one of two things—quit the game, or learn how to play it.

* * * * *

The dear old _Saturday Review_ has discovered, to its own satisfaction, why Vardon and Ray were beaten by Ouimet. The concentrated will power of the gallery did it, and the idea, says the S. R., “is based upon the latest teachings of psychology.” “Englishmen,” it adds, “are seldom at their best when playing games in America.”

Can you—as Baucis inquired of Philemon—beat it? Apparently the denser atmosphere of the British Isles is a non-conductor of psychological force; otherwise, Mr. McLoughlin could not have brought home the Davis Cup, and Heinrich Schmidt could not have held Harold Hilton until the last gun was fired.

* * * * *

Women are queer. They can’t see the difference between playing eighteen holes of golf and digging eighteen shrub holes in a garden.

* * * * *

Al Seckel is our notion of the Height of Affluence. His valet caddies for him.

* * * * *

Another cousin of Young Grimes, reports D. M. V., refers to a w. k. golf implement as a Skenecaddy putter.

* * * * *

Entrants for the Printers’ Golf tournament were requested to “hole all puts and replace all pivots.” A proofroom foozle.

THE GOLFER’S PRIMER

I.

See the La-dy on the tee. What is she do-ing?

She is writ-ing down her score, which was on-ly nine for that hole.

Why does she not move on? Some men are wait-ing to play.

She will e-vent-u-al-ly. But first she must re-turn to the edge of the green and pick up her bag.

Why does she not lay the bag on the far side of the green, so as not to de-lay the game?

Be-cause if she did that she would not be a la-dy golf-er.

II.

See the man on the tee. What is he wait-ing for?

He is wait-ing for the con-vers-a-tion to cease.

Oh, yes. But ever-y one is qui-et now. Why does he not hit the ball?

Some one must be breath-ing heav-i-ly. There! Ever-y one is now hold-ing his breath.

Oh, he has hit the ball, but he has knocked it on-ly a lit-tle way. What is he so sore a-bout?

A rob-in chirped just as he raised his club, and it spoiled his drive. If he could catch that bird you bet he would wring its neck.

III.

See the man. He is danc-ing up and down. What is the mat-ter?

The play-er be-hind him drove in-to him and beaned him with the ball.

Does that hap-pen ver-y oft-en?

Oh, ver-y.

Here comes the man be-hind. Is he go-ing to a-pol-o-gize?

It is cus-tom-ary.

What will he say?

The us-u-al thing. “Aw-ful-ly sor-ry, old man. I’d no i-de-a I should drive so far.”

What will the first man say?

Not much, but he will keep up a dev-il of a think-ing.

IV.

See the man. Has he a chill?

O, no; it is too hot to have a chill.

Per-haps he has St. Vi-tus’ dance?

No, he is mere-ly ad-dress-ing the ball. That is what is called the pre-lim-in-ary wag-gle.

But he has been wag-gling for five min-utes, and oth-er play-ers want to play.

Yes, he is a well-known bird. He be-longs to the wag-tail fam-i-ly.

How long does he wag-gle?

There is no tell-ing. Let us go a-way. He gives me the wil-lies.

V.

See the men run-ning! Is it a foot-race?

O, no. They are play-ing golf.

But why do they run on such a hot day?

They are a-fraid that some-body will ask to play through them.

See, one of them has lost his ball, but he will let it go and drop an-oth-er.

But the play-ers be-hind them do not seem to be in a hur-ry.

Not in the least. So far as they are con-cerned, the men in front can run and be damned.

VI.

See the man. He is wav-ing his arm. Why does he do that?

He has lost his ball and is mo-tion-ing for the play-ers be-hind him to play through.

O, yes. Here they come. But see, the man has found his ball and is play-ing it.

Yes, that’s a com-mon trick. Let us hope some-body will hit the man in the bean.

A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO

_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._

THE LADY GOLFER.

When lovely woman whacks the pellet,
Though fair as Helen’s be her face,
Her golfing form (I grieve to tell it)
Is very far removed from grace.
The way she stands, her every motion,
Suggest the airy dinosaur:
She sways, she lifts, she heaves like ocean—
_Ma chère, vous devriez la voir!_

* * * * *

The Oklahoma Times refers editorially to the Nineteenth Amendment. The editor, it is conjectured, is probably a golfer, and has confused the amendment with the hole.

* * * * *

Society over here doesn’t make much of golf. For one thing, all sorts of people play it; then there isn’t much chance to exhibit millinery, while to watch a match one has to walk three or four miles. It is easier to pretend an interest in tennis.

* * * * *

Golf seems a great waste of time, until you see a man shooting at clay pigeons or starting off to attend an automobile race.

* * * * *

We believe we have discovered a method of hitting a golf ball with certainty and precision, and we pass it on to the great army of toppers. You know what you do; you step up to the ball apprehensively and hit it timidly and ineffectively. Then, when it hop-skips into the rough you waste all manner of epithets on it. The language is all right, but it is applied at the wrong time.

Try this; tee the ball, stand over it threateningly, and glare at it balefully. As you swing back, say, between shut teeth, “You pock-marked”—the adjective brings you to the top of the swing, when you pause an instant to gather all your energy. Then apply the noun—any you may fancy—at the same time smiting the ball as if it were the head of a rattler.

The secret of the method is a maximum of concentration. Your malignant gaze has never left the ball. It is surprising the distance you get—if you don’t smash your club. Even that’s better than topping.

THE COMPULSION OF HABIT.

Sir: Gentleman with two golf clubs in his hand stepped into an elevator in the Railroad Exchange. After the car started up he yelled “Four!” The man standing in front of him ducked his head.

E. F. W.

* * * * *

Meditating on the fact that the English have beaten the Scotch at their own game of golf, a correspondent writes, “Is there, in the whole history of games, another case like this?” Sure. There’s polo. It originated in Asia.

* * * * *

We do not wish to add to the already extensive list of words and phrases used in writing of golf, but it occurs to us that “led the field” would be a serviceable phrase in reporting a qualifying round.

* * * * *

Suggestion to crack golfers: Why not get photographed in the act of finishing a drive?

* * * * *

“Keep your eye on the ball,” writes Arthur Taylor, the w. k. golfer. And he adds, quizzically; “Which eye?” It makes a difference.

* * * * *

Speaking of golf (which we do on the slightest encouragement) the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has been considering the best hole in a choice of 50,000. The experts do not agree, naturally, but they do agree that the best “blind hole” is the Alps hole at Prestwich.

At a meeting of 10,000 Chicago golfers, it was agreed that the most attractive hole was the nineteenth.

* * * * *

In his preface to his book, “The New Golf,” P. A. Vaile writes: “Unless one can play, or at least talk intelligently about golf, one has to miss about three-quarters of the conversation in any country club—and many other places in America.” That were indeed a deprivation.

As for the instruction in the book; the essence of it is that one should grip the club tightly and think of nothing except hitting the ball. Sound advice; there is no better. It is almost impossible to explain the golf stroke because of its simplicity. One might write a book explaining how to swim, but if the novice persisted in throwing up his hands he would go under. Similarly, if the golf novice persists in attacking the ball in a complex and unnatural manner, elaborate treatises on the simplicity of golf will do him no good.

A large part of Mr. Vaile’s book is taken up in pooh-poohing the theories of other writers, which are for the most part pooh-poohable. The question arises, what would Mr. Vaile and the others do for material if the game were not enveloped in mystery, and the simplest club shot considered as solemnly as the ordination of a bishop?

* * * * *

A golf bag that does not require a caddy is among the season’s novelties. It is, we assume, so contrived that every now and then it slams itself on the ground with sufficient force to break the shaft of the driver or brassie.

* * * * *

A popular fallacy, usually cherished by the missus, is that a man can get as much physical good from weeding a garden as from playing eighteen holes of golf.

* * * * *

From Milwaukee comes the regret that we have deserted the r. and a. game for a mere automobile. We found that hauling on a wheel ruined the delicacy of our approaching game.

* * * * *

Nineteenth Hole has a yarn to tell. His opponent drove a ball under a low-limbed thorn apple, and as he crawled into the thicket on his tum, N. H. said j. l. t. “Keep your head down!”

* * * * *

There is nothing surprising in the news that a caddy found a diamond necklace on the links. A caddy is likely to find anything except the thing you pay him to keep an eye on.

A GREAT GAME.

Sir: A tall youth who golfs (by courtesy) at Jaxon park has a wig-wag and swing which suggests a combination of St. Vitus, tango, and locomotor ataxia. As he was teeing off with much ceremony the other day a Scotch devotee of the game remarked: “’Tis a great game! There’s a mon who gets a’ there is in it. Before he heets the ba’ he’s used every mooscle in his body except his ears.”

R. H. C.

* * * * *

“Near Golf Links”—Ad of a South Haven resort. Obviously, again, a hyphen is missing.

* * * * *

“Play golf on perfect links”—Railroad ad. There ain’t no sich thing.

* * * * *

It is never too late to learn. From their more recent disquisitions we observe that professional golfers are learning something about the game, and are advocating methods precisely the reverse of their former instruction.

ADDRESSING THE BALL.

I do not like the Colonel’s camp,
Because I hate a crowd;
The language there would light a lamp,
And all the talk is loud.

I do not like the Taftian camp,
Its atmosphere is ghoulish;
The language there is dull and damp,
And all the talk is foolish.

I do not like a hue and cry,
I do not like a pall,
A plague on both your camps, say I—
_Hey, Caddy! Watch that ball!_

* * * * *

“The revolutionists hold much of southern Finland along the Finnish golf,” reports the Minneapolis Journal. And A. E. B. thinks it must be annoying to have those seaside links cluttered up with Bullsheviki, Red Guards, and other things.

* * * * *

The difference between a summer member and a regular member of a golf club is that the summer member does not enjoy the privilege of paying dues during the winter.

GOLF ATHLETES.

Sir: As a fellow sport will you kindly assist me to hand a few remarks to those people who speak of golfers as “athletes.” Athlete is an over-worked word, anyhow, and to tack golfers on to its tail, is about the limit. To my notion golf is a game fit only for ladies and doddering old men. You are at liberty to give my address to any golf “athlete” who thinks he would like to “take a fall” out of me.—Buck (_Ex-champion tiddlediwinks athlete._)

* * * * *

One or two professionals have admitted that when you look at the hole in putting the ball keeps wonderfully on the line, but they think they sense the distance better by looking at the ball.

FOOTNOTES TO BAEDEKER.

At Kingston, Sept. 2, 1912.

Between the fort and the town sprawls the links of the Barifield Golf Club, as “sporty” a course as you please. I remarked a clubhouse and a number of putting greens; for the rest one plays anywhere across the rock-strewn landscape. Wire fences surround the putting greens, on which the grass is tall and thick. A herd of cows were cropping the fairgreens and these I took to be members of the Greens Committee. Although it was Saturday afternoon, only two players were on the links, and they, as long as they remained in view, were searching for balls among the myriad stones of the hillside.

* * * * *

At Manchester, Vermont, we were the honored guests of Dr. P. Sibleius Ferus, the distinguished Latin scholar and gentleman. An evening’s conversation with Dr. Ferus is as stimulating as I conceive an evening with Dr. Middleton to have been. I also shot a round of golf with the doctor on the links of the Ekwanok Club—the most beautiful course I ever expect to see. The score? No matter.

* * * * *

It was a new experience to play golf among the mountains. It is a passionate golfer who can disregard the distracting views from the tees and regard the ball as raptly as certain Hindu gentlemen contemplate their equators. Upon the flat and smoky links on the south side of Chicago concentration is easy. The ball is the handsomest object in sight. There, too, it seems a more important matter than among the mountains. Of course one may look at it this way: A golf ball is a symbol of infinity; it is as perfect a sphere as Aldebaran; the power that sends it winging is one with the power that moves the stars in their courses; the laws that govern its flight and trajectory are as immutable as the laws that bind Arcturus and his sons. The trouble is, if you get to thinking in that groove while addressing the ball you are apt to laugh, and that spoils your drive.

* * * * *

Chicago golfers who may have played around the links of the Claremont Country Club of Oakland, will agree that the course may be classified as “sporty” especially in August. The earth is baked hard and the turf burnt brown, and the ball, however driven, runs like a kangaroo. If the drive deviates from the straight and narrow path the ball rolls down hill to heaven and the caddy knows where. One usually aims ten or more points to the right or left of the flag; and so many shots must be played off steep slopes that a man with one leg six inches shorter than the other would have a decided advantage over the conventionally legged player.

* * * * *

A writer in _Drover’s Journal_ remarks that we are “trying to tell Jerry Travers how to play golf.” The gentleman is wrong, as usual; we should assume to teach a duck how to swim. But putting is a department of golf in which one man’s opinion is as good as another’s.

A child cannot drive a ball 250 yards, but a child can putt better than a number of gentlemen we know who have been playing golf for years—provided the child is permitted to function naturally, as when it plays croquet.

When a seasoned player, distant only a dozen feet from the cup, can putt a ball a yard to the right or left of the hole, it shows that something is practically wrong. Yet one sees such pathetic exhibitions of inaptitude on every green.

SPEAKING OF PUTTING.

“Putts and calls are the safest and surest method of trading in wheat, corn or oats, because your loss is absolutely limited to the amount bought.”—Ad.

Keep your eye on the pit!

* * * * *

In _Golf Illustrated_, Mr. Francis Ouimet writes that when, in his approach putt, he runs by the cup only eight feet, he is more confident of holing the next putt than if the approach had been three or four feet short? When a man overruns the cup eight feet, would you call that sensing the distance?

THE SEVENTEENTH OF MARCH.

Sir: Apropos of the day, likewise apropos of one of your hobbies, it might interest you to know that golf as a game is of Irish origin, having been played by Cuchullian, a personality who figures largely in Irish heroic literature. In fact, it is said that the snakes left Ireland because of an unsuccessful attempt of a kind old mother snake to hatch a consignment of golf balls which she mistook for eggs. Whereupon she rallied all her ilk and they betook themselves to a land more suitable for incubating purposes.

T. O’D.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HOLE!

Sir: If I fail to hold my place on the team this year, it will be because your eye-on-the-hole stuff has made a good putterer out of a mediocre putter, and the crime will rest upon your colyum.

FARTHEST NORTH.

Stick to it, old man, and you’ll come out all right. Two eminent psychologists have assured us that our theory is absolutely sound, and we’d rather have their opinion than that of Harry Vardon, who confesses that he doesn’t know anything about putting.

HAPPY HINTS FOR GLOOMY GOLFERS.

A large percentage of golf gloom arises from slicing. A golfer’s idea of hell is to stand on a hot tee for a million years and slice balls out of bounds. The chronic slicer is a wretched figure and he falls as low as he can when, giving up hope of ever hitting a straight ball, he aims a quarter of a mile to the left of the flag.

There are at least seven causes of slicing. The commonest is the vicious practice of bringing the clubhead down outside the line of the ball’s flight. This imparts a rotary motion to the ball, and the flight of it describes a crescent. You do this nine times out of ten. But do not despair; we can help you. We can teach you to hit inside the line.

Buy from a commission merchant a basket of very, very bad eggs, and give these to the caddy to carry. When you tee your ball, or come up to it on the fairgreen, place an egg about three inches away from the ball and an inch or so back of it. Now swing, being careful to keep the clubhead from straying beyond the line, otherwise you will smash the egg and scatter the malodorous contents. Before a dozen eggs are broken you will quit slicing or be asked to resign from the club.

If the egg remedy fails, procure a piece of dynamite and use that instead. This will effect a permanent cure.

* * * * *