THE first lesson to be learned by the aspiring golfer is the value of practice. This is the beginning and end of excellence - the fundamental secret of improvement, other things being equal. Speaking for myself, I am convinced that the present position I hold in the golfing world is in a very great measure due to the faculty I am gifted with, of being able to proceed out to some quiet corner of the links, with just a couple of clubs and a dozen balls, and religiously set myself the task of trying to find out the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of these particular weapons. To many this procedure may seem a somewhat dull and uninteresting task, but personally I have always found it to be a most fascinating pastime, and although nowadays my enthusiasm for practice may not be quite so marked as it was ten or twenty years ago, still I must candidly acknowledge enjoying even to this day an hour all alone by myself on the links more than the pleasure of participating in the most interesting and pleasant match one can imagine. Moreover, I consider that a young player is apt to gain more knowledge in such an hour of solitude than he is at all likely to acquire in playing thirty-six holes against even the finest players in the land.

My attention was first called to the value of practice by the case of a British amateur, Mr. A. F. Macfie. As a small boy I remembered him as a player with a handicap of something like ten or twelve strokes. There seemed no great likelihood of his ever becoming a really first rate golfer, for it did not appear as if he was in any way peculiarly adapted for the game. He was not a particularly young man and moreover he was a man of remarkably slight physique, but he overcame these natural obstacles by a grim determination to conquer the game at any cost.

Eventually he did conquer it, as he won the Inaugural Amateur Championship which was held at Hoylake in 1885, defeating in the final round Mr. Horace Hutchinson by no less than six up and four to play. It was a somewhat extraordinary feat for a player who but a few years before was in receipt of a comparatively long handicap and seemed to have nothing in his favor. He won that Championship event by the extraordinary mechanical accuracy of his game. By assiduous thought and practice he had made himself into a veritable golfing machine. Outdriven from the tee by nearly every player he had to meet, he nevertheless kept unwaveringly on his way, trusting absolutely to his mechanical accuracy, and it seldom failed him.

His success was in every way due to a determination to conquer the game, allied with the faculty of being able to spend hour after hour in solitary practice. One would see him out early in the morning and late at night, with two or three clubs and numberless balls, playing the same class of shot for hours on end. It had the appearance of being a dull, monotonous species of amusement, but he apparently enjoyed it, as he never seemed to tire of the task, and in the end his assiduity met with its due reward.

Of course America has a repetition of Mr. Allan Macfie in the person of Mr. Walter Travis. I have been told by those who know him well that in the early days of his career he would, like the Britisher I have mentioned, pass hour after hour playing individual shots in the game; although he must have had a natural aptitude for the task he had set himself, still one cannot but think that his golfing success is in a great measure due to assiduous practice.

I have often heard such players as Mr Travis and Mr. Macfie termed "made" and not natural players, and there is naturally much that is true in the statement. On the other hand, however, it may safely be said that literally all the leading players in the world are more or less "made" players, for although they may be blessed with natural gifts for the playing of the game and have had the inestimable advantage of learning the rudiments thereof in early youth when joints are loose and muscles supple, still the accuracy of their game is almost entirely due to hard practice and consequent knowledge and skill. They simply had an advantage over the men who commenced comparatively late in life in that they were blessed with better material to work upon, but nevertheless the finished article as represented by the great professionals is in a sense a "made" player, or perhaps it would be more correct to say a "developed" player.

There is no more remarkable example of a| "developed" player than the great James.

Braid himself. The original material was forceful but crude; by the aid of assiduous practice he has developed that crude material until it has become one of the most finished articles to be found in the realms of golf, and moreover without in any way detracting from the natural gifts with regard to power.

There can be no shadow of doubt that a young player holds a big advantage if he serves his apprenticeship to the game on a links on which there is a sufficiency of room to practice. In consequence, the British players who learn the game on our seaside courses are to be envied; and it is significant that nearly every British player of great note, be he amateur or professional, originally played the game on a seaside course. In this respect American golfers are under a serious disadvantage in comparison with British players, as the seaside course is practically non existent on that side. Practicing on a confined inland course is not nearly as pleasant or satisfactory as practicing on an open stretch of ground where the player can select his own particular plot on which to test and develop his theories.

On the majority of inland courses it is a somewhat difficult matter to find a suitable spot to practice iron play, as the greens committee of any club will naturally object to any player practicing innumerable iron shots from off the fair-way of the course, and it is not particularly gratifying or useful work to keep on playing from the rough. It was not until I came to live near an inland course that I realized the comparative difficulties that many young players have to labor under, and in consequence I felt all the more thankful that I had originally served my apprenticeship at the seaside.