Now here are one or two samples of points in regard to which the golfer constantly neglects to display his cunning and is the loser thereby. Assuming that in the general way you can get as much length when it is wanted as the other man, always try to make him play the odd to you. You do so naturally with your tee shots and many of the others, but are not really thinking at the time that you are wanting him to play the odd. The man who is playing the odd, even from a very little way behind the other, is at a much greater moral disadvantage than is often suspected, and if the other man always noticed things as much as he should, he is at a greater practical advantage than he realises, for if his opponent fails he can see the cause of it, this remark applying especially to what happens in the short game. How many putts have gone wrong that never need have done had the man who made them watched what happened when his adversary putted first! Then, again, on this point of making the other man play the odd the case is constantly recurring where both men are obliged to play short of some hazard, or to take a particular line to a hole which is not the straight one. The man who goes second will find it very much to his advantage if he tries to squeeze so closely up to the point of danger as to be just nearer to it than the other, the latter then having to play the odd and being then more inclined to press with it and perhaps to miss it. The man who is playing the odd is in a sense taking a shot into the unknown; the other man knows everything. That is just the difference. Another stupid mistake that many men make is to try experimental or fancy shots, perhaps with clubs that are unfamiliar to them, just because the other man has played two more. How many thousands of holes have been lost through that! The experimental shot fails, the other man makes a good one, the experimenter suddenly finds he has to fight for it, and a minute or two later is watching his adversary take the honour from the next tee. Again, what matches could have been won that were lost if the players had only shown half the sense that Mr. Hilton did in the Amateur Championship of 1912 at Prestwick, in picking his places for putting, as it were, always, whenever possible, running up so that he would have to putt uphill instead of down, the former being far the easier kind of putting. Nowadays there are inclines on every green and round about the hole, and a flat putt is a comparative rarity. But the average man never thinks of these inclines until he has to play along them. The time for most thinking about them is when making the stroke before, so that the putt may be along the easiest line to the hole. This is not a question of skill; it is simply one of sense. A man can play short of the hole or past it, or to the right or left, and there will be one point from which the putting will be easier than the other. It may often happen that it would pay better to be four yards past the hole than two short of it, for you will not only have had the chance of holing, but the putt back may be an uphill one.

But with it all, the habit must be cultivated of thinking as much as possible in advance - thinking quickly and acting with decision. Questions of the value of practice swings have arisen lately. We have seen rather too much of these practice swings in some quarters. We may believe in the practice swing - just one or at most two. A man may be an experienced golfer, and he may have played a certain stroke nearly a million times before, but golf is essentially a game of fears and doubts, and apart from just setting the right muscles in a state of complete preparation for the task in hand a practice swing gives one a little confidence. The shot is shaped; there is nothing to do but repeat the stroke that has been made; it can be done. To that extent the practice swing may be thoroughly recommended. But some members of the young American School go farther than this, and it is questionable whether they are wise. For one thing the delicate muscles and the nervous system that are concerned with the stroke in hand are easily tired, and if the shot is a long one needing power the odds are against its being done so well after five practice swings as after one. Show me the man who can drive his best and straightest after five practice swings on the tee. Then there is the hesitation and doubt that are induced. I believe that in most cases these players are really waiting for an inspiration. They are not ready for the stroke they have to play. Jack White in once confiding to me some of the secrets of his successful putting, said that when he went about on the green examining the line back and front, he was simply trying to gain time and nothing more. "I want to feel that I want to putt," he said, "and while I am waiting for that feeling coming on I can hardly stand motionless on the green or look up at the sky." It is that way with these Americans; they are waiting for an inspiration. But it does not always seem to be responsive, and they wait too long. A moment must come when they are as ready for the shot as ever they will be in their lives; if they let it pass nothing but doubts and hesitations can follow, and that is the danger to the player of excessive slowness. He begins to fear his fate too much. And also one round of golf played like this makes a fearful mental strain, and how often do we see that men who win their morning matches by such methods look very tired and lose easily in the afternoon.

The case of Mr. Ouimet, who has so suddenly become a great power in American golf, has already been considered, and Mr. Walter Travis's high position was established long ago. Apart from these two, the new star and the old one, and the young professional M'Dermott, there are two others who hold a higher place in the opinion of the golfers of their own country and ours than any other players do, and those are Mr. Charles Evans, junior, of Chicago, and Mr. Jerome D. Travers, foremost players of the west and east as they respectively are. In every way Mr. Evans is a very delightful golfer. When we saw him at Prestwick in 1911 he was even then a brilliant player, and one who impressed British golfers as no other had ever done since Mr. Travis had won at Sandwich, and he had then an advantage which the winner of our championship had not - he had his whole goldfinch life before him. Since that time he has undoubtedly improved. He has p become physically stronger, experience has helped him, and he has greater resource and skill. And despite the fact that he has not yet won an American championship, there is this to be said for him, that in the sense of accomplishment, in variety of stroke, perfection of it, in playing the game as it was meant to be played, as we say, he is still, for all his failures, the best amateur golfer in the United States at the present time. But Mr. Evans is a man of very keen and somewhat too sensitive temperament. He is inclined sometimes to fear his fate unduly. Yet whenever we are inclined to judge him a little harshly for his temperament, let it be remembered that fortune has dealt him some cruel hurts, and that it is not a quality of human man to bear himself indifferently to perpetual adversity When he was the last hope of his country at the championship at Sandwich in 1914, and striving gallantly, his opponent went to the turn in a record score of 31. To be merely sorry for "Chick " in such circumstances is inadequate; along with him we smiled at the absurd extent to which his ill-luck spitefully pursued him then. Even though it had to be counted, it was unreal. He must be a champion some time.