IT is a patent fact that every golfer must be possessed of a method of some kind. As I have already said, it is useless attacking the game in a haphazard, go-as-you-please kind of style, Micawber-like, waiting for something to turn up. When playing, my paramount idea is that each individual hole should be set down as possessing a par value, just as a security is possessed of a certain value in pounds, shillings, or pence. Hence you say to yourself, "I should be able to do this hole in four, this one in five, this in three," and so on, hole by hole, until you reach the end of the round.

This means to an end is just an imaginary Colonel Bogey, only upon a very high scale. In your own mind you set up a certain standard, you are aware of what should be done and what you are doing, and you know what there is remaining to be faced.

Method, however, is one thing, theory is another; but practice, constant use and intelligent application, is quite as important. A player cannot in fairness hope to acquit himself well unless he is prepared to devote ample time to and to go unreservedly for the game. The greater the amount of practice he gets through, the steadier will be the game he will play. He knows what he is capable of, he does not find it at all necessary to strain after effect, and he is able to control himself when faced by anything that may crop up at an unexpected moment.

A player who wishes to be successful must never allow himself to think of what he has already done. That has gone, never to return; idle regrets are useless; he must concentrate the whole of his attention upon what he has in front of him. He must not allow a bad or an unfortunate stroke to put him off his game ; he must think only of what is to come, what yet remains to be accomplished.

The ordinary player might be thrown out of his stride after making a poor shot, perhaps, but he must educate himself up to the point of feeling no regret for what has already occurred.

Accidents will occasionally happen, I am fully aware, but a careful player is one who will not accept any risks when he knows in exactly how many strokes he should be able to reach the hole he is playing to. In medal competitions (or in any other, as far as that goes) you cannot afford to play a bad stroke, and that is the long and short of it.

Nothing is easier than to set up, as I have suggested, this par value for the various holes, no matter what course they may be upon. Should the medal competition be upon the links attached to the club of which the player is a member, he is fully aware of what he can do, and has done, under ordinary conditions. Even in the Championships the course is thrown open during the week prior to their decision, and in playing round the golfer discovers what difficulties are likely to beset his path. After that the method I have referred to should not be a hard matter.

But, and I would like strongly to impress this upon all players, don't get into the habit of carefully preserving the scores you may have made before the all-important day. It is a bad plan to do this, and I will explain why this is the case.

Very possibly you may have played a round of extraordinary excellence, and naturally feel elated at your performance. You check the round, hole by hole, but you overlook the possible explanation that it may have happened when you played far above your average form. Then, when the real test comes along, something happens, or you discover you are not doing nearly so well. This knowledge of your present failure to equal the past is calculated to annoy you, and the chances are all in favour of its affecting your play. Now this is a thing that must be carefully guarded against. You must devote the whole of your attention to the task in hand, and must not allow yourself to be distracted by any side issues.

A NEAR SHAVE.

Mr. C. B. Fry has told us how he once failed to win a sprint race by wondering how the other man was getting on. It is just the same in golf; and once you allow your mind to wander and to begin wondering about the why and the wherefore, it is a difficult matter to get back into your stride again.

Many of the players in medal competitions, I have noticed, go at the game in just a happy-go-lucky style, trusting they may be fortunate enough to pull through-somehow. Such a practice is really of no use at all. I cannot lay down too strongly that the great secret of success is the absolute concentration of thought. Never allow yourself to wander, and never play to the gallery. It is the steady game that brings the player to the fore.

Especially is this the case when you have reached the green and the hole is smiling at you from a distance of, say, ten yards. When I am faced with a putt of that length my rule invariably is to try and make certain of the hole in 2. I never diverge from that. I never allow the possibility of getting down in I to sway my balance of thought and certainty of intention; but very frequently you will find that as you attempt to lay the ball dead it will suddenly disappear from view into the hole.

On the other hand, if you attempt to hole such a putt as I have described in I, the chances are all in favour of your miscalculating your strength and distance, and it may, as a result, render the playing of 3 a necessity, this meaning the loss of a stroke that caution would have rendered superfluous. The proper amount of caution upon the green means everything to the player, for it is there that the scores are made or spoilt.

When a return is made to the pavilion, and the players have gathered for a cigar and a chat, you may hear of drives that have been topped, but not very frequently. A golfer will much oftener talk about the putts he has missed, and for these failures he blames his ill fortune, conveniently and persistently overlooking the fact that by overstraining himself in the effort to reach the possible he has missed, like the dog in the fable, the absolute certainty.

Poor putting, it may be said without fear, is the cause of a player's downfall in the majority of instances. As I have just explained, the addition of an extra stroke is quite an easy matter; and should you make this addition at all frequently, the difference it makes to the aggregate may be readily imagined.

Score playing, however, is one of the most nerve trying of any contest in the world of athletics. Many players repeatedly fail to do themselves justice on account of their feeling of nervousness, for never yet has there been a man possessed of absolutely no nerves. "The invisible man" we have had, but the nerveless man - oh, no!

Despite my many years of close connection with the game, I admit that I never enter upon a medal round without feeling a tremor run through my nerves. But by concentration of thought upon the business in hand I am enabled to conquer that feeling of nervousness and to finally wear it down.

Every man is beyond doubt affected in a similar manner; but he must cultivate the will power necessary to grapple with these attacks of nerves. He must, I repeat; for unless he is capable of doing so he will find his play affected in a wonderful degree. This self-control, though, cannot be gained at once; but the mere fact of playing on and on and trying to think out the strokes, and that alone, renders the task, as he goes on, an easier one.

The player improves as the time and practice go on. He does not feel too much cast down and disheartened over one particular failure, or too elated over the accomplishment of a big performance. The real secret of success is this concentration. You must make yourself capable, like a batsman or a footballer, of playing yourself into form, and guard against going off with a rush and a big flourish of trumpets at the start, going up like a rocket and coming down like the proverbial stick.

The golfer of scant experience is far too apt to try for a great deal too much as soon as he commences playing, and the result is just as natural - utter and complete disaster. He makes a bad stroke, and then he broods over it, refusing to cast it aside and try and hope for better things to come, as they will do, in the future.

Can you wonder at his non-success under these circumstances? I think not, for concentration of thought on the game ahead is an absolute necessity.