PRIZES cannot fall to the lot of all. In respect of tournaments, let us suppose the top prize amounts to £20. A professional, we will still suppose, plays for and wins it. But he is not that amount the richer in pocket, as he has had to pay his own expenses.

Nor are these expenses light; and should you be unfortunate enough to fail in winning a prize, as someone must do, you have expended your time and money to no purpose, and at the finish you are poorer by many pounds than when you left home.

Again, tournaments, it is almost unnecessary for me to point out, are not all-the-year-round events. They are held during the spring and autumn months, but the many weeks of summer and winter weather are almost entirely dead seasons.

I can only repeat that it is absolutely imperative that a professional must combine the business of a golf-club manufacturer, if he is ambitious enough to desire to make anything approaching a moderate competency out of the game.

Here, again, professionals are really deserving of a little more consideration at the hands of the clubs. Some of the latter are displaying an inclination to let the bigger firms in to the exclusion of their own man, the business of clubmaker to the organisation being disposed of by means of tender, and the highest bidder in the usual course of events securing the appointment.

It is admitted that monopoly is bad in all things, whether in relation to golf or anything else, and I think the practice I have just described is scarcely the way to treat a professional as he deserves to be treated.

When he discovers he is not encouraged, a man becomes disheartened. That is one way of looking at the matter, but there is another, and it must not be forgotten that there is a great and growing field abroad open to the leading exponents of the game.

There is also another matter in which it is an open secret a professional is not treated as he might be. I refer to the subject of expenses-a subject that has proved a bone of contention for a considerable time past in various quarters. Let me take the Championship as an instance.

In a very few and rapidly decreasing number of cases the players who are representing their clubs are paid their absolutely out-of-pocket expenses by their clubs. Yet the cream of the professional world is competing for the Blue Ribbon year by year, and a club is fortunate enough in itself if its professional is in the happy position of champion.

There are only three prizes set up for the Open Championship - the first, second, and third - really worth the winning in a purely monetary sense. Now contrast this fact with the actual number of professionals who make the annual journey and the money won, and the force of my reasoning, that each competitor might be paid his out-of-pocket expenses, must, I think, be admitted without question.

The actual cost to a professional in taking part in this Championship, no matter upon what course it may be played, cannot be placed at anything less than £10; for a competitor must, as a matter of necessity, secure comfortable quarters near the scene of operations, and the question of railway fare alone to a south of England professional, when he has to visit St. Andrews, or to a professional attached to a Scotch club, when it is played at Sandwich, is a by no means inconsiderable item.

In my humble opinion, every club should, as a matter of principle, defray the cost incurred by its professional. The occasion of the Championship may be looked upon in the light of a holiday, or a reunion; but it is a very expensive jaunt just the same, and there is little doubt that many of those who participate in it cannot really afford to risk losing the amount of money I have mentioned as a necessary outlay.

As for the prize list itself, I cannot say that I feel entirely satisfied that it is large enough to be really representative of the Championship of the world. In 1900 the amount of the premier prize was raised to £50. That was a step in the right direction; it was the largest amount we had ever played for. But I am speaking on behalf of the whole class of professional players when I say that the first prize in the Open Championship might with advantage be made £100, and the remaining prizes calculated upon a pro rata scale.

There should be no difficulty experienced in so raising sufficient money that the prize list, as at present constituted, might be doubled in value. If, for instance, a prize committee were elected and were to take the matter in hand, issuing circulars to each of the golf clubs in the United Kingdom, in which a request could be made for a yearly donation of half a guinea for such a provision of prize money, the difficulty would be solved at once.

As far as I am able to judge there can be but one objection advanced to such a means being used for the securing of additional financial assistance,

This objection may be that the whole of the clubs - wealthy or otherwise - would be placed upon exactly the same grade as regards subscribing to a common object. A sum such as I suggested donated but once during the twelve months, however, would be scarcely felt by even the weakest. In view of such an objection, though, I might suggest an alternative plan, that is, that no fixed annual donation might be solicited. By following this method a wealthy club might donate as much as five guineas, or something of the kind, and the smaller clubs would be enabled to assist as far as the condition of their balances at the bank would allow.

Were the amount of prize money to be doubled and the expenses of the whole of the professional competitors to be paid, the game would be improved in every way. A man would then possess the right of asking for financial support from the club whose honour he represents, and the fact that he would lose nothing over the journey and time set apart for play would encourage the young and rising golfer to compete.

That the Championships are popular with the general public cannot be denied. The favourite course, judging by the attendance, is certainly St. Andrews, for in drawing power it stands an easy first. On the last day of the competition in 1900

Sandwich. krossing the sahara the spectators numbered over six thousand, a crowd that could not be secured at any other spot.

Sandwich, for instance, is too far removed from a big centre to draw an enormously big crowd; but in golf, unlike any other kind of sport, we cannot look upon it from a "gate" point of view. Were we in a position to do so, this question of raising additional prize money might be settled without trouble once and for all.