On the whole the writer emerged a better man for this cold-douche treatment, and he was given a handicap of 18.

He then began to read every article and book on golf in the English language, and so great was his thirst for knowledge that he deplored that golf had not become part of the literature of Germany and France. He coquetted with many notions and ideas, and one of these, "the straight left arm," stood him in such good stead for a while that his handicap came down to 12. (He now knows why the notion of the straight left arm subsequently played him false.)

This experience was followed by strange lapses from golfing sanity, but the writer was patched up from time to time by various professionals, and his handicap was reduced to 10. He had now got rid of many false ideas with regard to the swing, and had adopted certain useful ideas, with the result that his game showed an all-round improvement, which brought his handicap down, first to 8, and then to 5.

It is easier, however, to get rid of false ideas than to get rid of bad habits, and the even tenor of his game was liable to be gravely disturbed by recurrences of tricks picked up or accentuated in the early days of his training under the pseudo-scientific professional.

The most persistent and the most demoralizing of these tricks was that common phenomenon of the swing - "body in too soon." In the periods of impotence produced by this scourge, every remedy known to the literature of the game and the Solons of the links was tried; and the writer, discarding one after another, came to place faith in the doctrine enunciated in a small book on golf bearing the engaging title, "The Simplicity of the Golf Swing." In a nutshell, the principle on which that doctrine is based is that at the beginning of both the up-swing and the down-swing it is the shoulders that move first, and that one should, therefore, leave it to the shoulders, in turning, to suggest the proper relative movement to arms and hands. This principle has the merit of extreme simplicity - it presents one concept, one mental picture, instead of a dozen; and in the writer's case it had for a time the effect of facilitating the timing of the full swing. It was not long, however, before first the short game and then the long game went utterly to pieces. The shot became a ponderous, lumbering affair, as unlike the quick, crisp movement of the professional as it was possible to be.

The writer now applied himself to the discovery of some other simple mental picture of the swing. He was convinced that, whether the shoulders moved first or last, good results would not be obtained by consciously trying to move them first. What the golfer has to do is to get into the best hitting position at the top of the up-swing. It may be that in doing this his shoulders will move first. It may be, on the other hand, that if he tries to move his shoulders first he will not get into that position. The instinct to turn the shoulders may be so strong that the shoulders will do their full part in the swing if the mind ignores them altogether, and concentrates itself on, say, moving the club with the hands. Indeed, after much thought, observation, and trial, the writer came to the conclusion that this was so, and that unless the shoulders were left to look after themselves, their part in the shot was likely to be over-emphasized and the shot impaired.

About this time (July, 1916) it was stated in the newspapers that Ernest Jones, the Chislehurst professional, who had had a leg shot off in France in March, had played round the Royal Norwich links (standing on one leg for each shot) in 83, and a little later, playing with David Ayton, he (still on one leg) had holed out the Clacton course - a long course - in 72. It was at once clear to the writer that Ernest Jones at all events must have thoroughly acquired the art of obtaining his results with the minimum exertion, and the writer lost no time in getting once more into touch with a player whose game he had always admired.

Before the war Ernest Jones had been one of the most promising golfers in the metropolitan district, and the Chislehurst Golf Club, the late home of the Empress Eugenie, had come to be known as the home of Ernest Jones. . . . Though he had not headed the list at any of the most important meetings, Ernest Jones had always been "there or thereabouts." He never failed to qualify for the Open Championship, he generally appeared well toward the top of the final lists, and his scores were uniformly sound. In the News of the World competitions he was wont to qualify, and to give a good account of himself in the subsequent rounds; and he did excellent work in the French Championship. In the Kent Championship he adopted the role of runner-up, and in three consecutive finals he lowered the record of three links - Eltham, Hythe, and Herne Bay. There can be no doubt that in the normal course of events Ernest Jones would have attained front rank among his fellow-professionals well before he was thirty. Then came the war. . . .

Fig. 2.- During the War.

Fig. 3. - To-day.

Jones was ready to respond to the call of King and Country, and in January, 1915, he - along with many other golfers - joined the Army. In November he was out in France, near to Loos; he went through the winter unscathed, but was badly wounded in March, 1916, by rifle grenade. Some sixteen pieces of metal were removed from his head, his right forearm, and his right leg, and this leg was subsequently amputated close below the knee. Nevertheless, the enemy had so far failed to destroy the golfer in him that four months later he was performing the incredible feat of holing out a long and testing course in an average of fours, handing his crutches to the caddy precisely seventy-two times in the round.

The achievement becomes the more startling when it is considered that Jones is a slightly built man on the short side - his height is under five feet six inches and his weight less than 10 stone: he was therefore unable to rely on any reserve of brute force.

His method of hitting the ball had always been conspicuously easy and decisive. In his use of the hands and the fingers he resembled Vardon, but his swing was flatter and rather more compact than Vardon's, and it was accompanied by less suggestion of power, but perhaps even greater suggestion of speed. It was a method which prima facie would stand well the ruthless test that was to be applied to it.

Ernest Jones, moreover, was known to his fellow-professionals, and to some fortunate amateurs, as a golfer who had brought an uncommonly penetrating mind to bear on an uncommonly perplexing subject. He was known as a player of original views, a player who had satisfied himself about the mechanics of the swing, and who played the game fully concious of what he was doing and why he was doing it.

When the writer first saw Jones after his convalescence he had just got his artificial leg, and though obviously embarrassed by it, he played noteworthy golf in an exhibition game with Vardon, Taylor, and Braid. One saw that he experienced difficulty in finishing the shot freely - the right leg came lumbering forward after the ball had been hit - but there was the same clean, crisp hitting as before. At the time of writing, however, he is on better terms with the artificial leg, and though it still complicates the question of balance, especially when the stance is uneven - as it frequently is at Chislehurst - it does not succeed in helping Jones's opponents to anything like the extent they would naturally expect it to do. Sequences of fours interrupted by threes continue to be the order of Jones's day.

The writer found that Jones was convinced that the golf swing could be readily taught and consistently performed only if it were conceived as one movement, that various members of the body (including the shoulders) were normally anxious to get busy too strenuously and too soon, and that the only way of insuring their working in due co-ordination with the other members of the body, notably the hands and the fingers, was to treat them as disastrous leaders, but as wholly admirable followers. The basis of the swing, as Jones had worked it out before the war, was the proper action of the hands and fingers.

His accident had put his theory of golf to the touch, and had intensified his faith in it; and it was not long before the present writer was swinging a golf club with a decisiveness which had previously seemed beyond his range of accomplishment.

More than ever Ernest Jones felt the artist's itch for asserting his point of view before the largest possible audience; but though at the very forefront of viva voce teachers, he was not a practised writer; nor would he resort to the device of commissioning a golfing journalist to produce a book purporting to be written by himself. It was in these circumstances that the present writer came to essay the task of explaining the principle and the method which Ernest Jones had made so vividly clear to him on the links.

The writer is fully aware of the danger of conveying impressions other than those intended to be conveyed, and he earnestly asks the reader to check the impressions formed by him by immediately trying them out on the links with club and ball.

In this book one lesson only is taught, and that one lesson is taught all the time. Each chapter is but a re-statement - from a different angle - of the principle enunciated in every other chapter. The risk of wearying the reader by reiteration has been preferred to the risk of leaving him in doubt.

"Surely," says the writer in the Daily Express, "among the thousands of golfers in the two hemispheres there is some one person who can make this plague of a game intelligible?"

There is. He is Ernest Jones. And if there is anything unintelligible in the following pages, it is the writer, and not Ernest Jones, who is at fault.