It is, however, a comparatively simple matter to alter the lie of an iron club, as any accomplished workman will put the nose of the club in a vise, and with one or two carefully dealt blows with a wooden mallet alter a flat lying head into an upright lying head, and vice versa, if this is the change required. Again the judicious use of a file may do much for the head of an iron club, and many an unpromising, clumsy looking weapon I have seen changed into a real gentleman of aristocratic

James Braid.

A British professional of the Modern Hard Hitting, Accurate School appearance by the aid of a file and a certain degree of labor.

Personally I never buy a small-headed iron club; not altogether for the reason that I am averse to using small-headed clubs, but simply because a big-headed iron club supplies me with material to work upon with a file. I have the metal there and I can work upon it until I have got that iron head to my liking, and very few of the iron heads I have ever used have been altogether innocent of the touch of the file.

I must acknowledge to having spoilt one or two iron heads in my attempts to improve upon them, but that was in my younger and less experienced days and I have since accumulated wisdom by the light of such disasters and have learned the lesson of knowing when to "leave well enough alone."

When I select iron clubs I invariably select them with large and heavy heads, so that I can reduce them to my liking.

When I select wooden clubs I invariably select them with the face of the club showing well in front of the angle of the shaft, as then I can file the face away until it is to my liking. If there is too much of a golf club it is an easy matter to take the superfluous matter away.

If there is not sufficient of a golf club, it is not at all an easy matter to add thereto, and moreover seldom proves a satisfactory method of altering a club.

It has been said that a good shaft is a pearl beyond price and there can be but little doubt that in connection with clubs which are made of wood the shaft is the main essential toward the making of a completely successful club, and that it is of no avail to have in your possession one of the best balanced and most beautifully modeled heads imaginable without it is allied to a shaft which can do its talents justice. I

It is quite possible to have a really good shaft attached to a beautifully balanced head, and yet have the result of this alliance turn out anything but satisfactory, as it may be that the head is too light to bring out the real qualities of the shaft. On the other hand, many really good shafts are not sufficiently strong for the club heads they are allied to, and in the process of the downward swing are apt to give, with the consequence that the club head is left behind, so to speak, and arrives at the ball a little later than the player anticipated.

This class of club is always a dangerous weapon, as on occasions the player will find that he will slice abnormally with it, and the harder he tries to hit the ball the farther he will propel the ball to the right. Personally I invariably put on one side the club which develops the habit of pushing the ball out on the off side of the course; it may have been a good servant once, but there is a limit to the life of even the very finest of shafts, and a time is sure to come when it loses sufficient of its natural rigidity to fail to keep the club head in its correct position on the downward swing.

I know it is hard, very hard, to put on one side an old and trusted friend and at the moment I can speak feelingly on the subject, as in a driver which has been my constant companion for over four years is a shaft which is giving the most evident indications that it is not now strong enough for the work it has to do; every now and then a tee shot will career out to the right something like sixty or eighty yards from the intended line of flight and although the fault may in a certain degree be that of the man wielding the club, still I prefer to use a club which is a little less apt to accentuate my failings. A shaft which has once gone "weak" is always treacherous and is best put on one side.

While a good shaft will literally make any wooden club provided the head is correctly weighted to bring out qualities in the shaft, on the other hand the very finest shaft in the world will be of no use in an iron club unless the combination of head and shaft is a happy one, and from my experience I have found that this matter of happy combination between the two integral parts of an iron club is a question of pure chance, and that on many occasions a real first-class shaft allied to an apparently beautifully modeled and balanced iron head results in a combination which as an effective weapon proves an absolute failure.

This failure is not the fault of the shaft, and moreover it is not the fault of the head; it is due to the fact that for some reason or other this particular head and this particular shaft do not hit it off as a combination. How often does one see a player performing with an approaching club, the shaft of which through continual use has become warped and bent. On a mere matter of appearance the club would appear to be just as indifferent a weapon as it is possible to imagine a club to be, but it supplies an example of one of these happy alliances which in the light of its own success can afford to laugh at the accepted principles and theories of club making.

Occasionally a player who is in possession of one of these weird, impossible looking clubs is convinced by some well-meaning friend that this old shaft of his is "done for" and that it would be wise for him to have a new shaft put in the club. It invariably happens that it was an ill day for the possessor of the club when he listened to this well-meaning advice as it is seldom, very seldom indeed, that one can get a new shaft put into an iron club that will prove as reliable or serviceable as the old and trusted friend.

I once had a vivid experience of the truth of this statement. I had an iron club with which I played all manner of shots, a species of "maid of all work" which seldom let me down. A day came when I thought that the shaft was becoming a little past its best, and in the belief that the merit of the club lay in the head I had no hesitation in having the original shaft taken out and a new one put in. The result was not at all happy, and in consequence I decided to have the old shaft resurrected, but unfortunately it could not be found; it had disappeared from the club-maker's shop, as so many apparently worthless shafts do. Well, I tried another new shaft in that head and still another until no less than eight new shafts had been fastened into that head, but not in one single instance did the combination prove as satisfactory as the original one which I had so rudely severed.

Eventually I gave that iron head away in disgust, and the man I gave it to promptly allied it to an old shaft he had lying by, and he told me some three years afterward that never in his life had he had an iron club to equal it. It was just the question of glorious chance; I had thrown a prize away and then drawn eight blanks; he had found another prize at the first attempt. But this has been my experience all through my career, and once a player is in possession of an iron club which suits him and has done him real good service he should not tamper with it, however crooked or bent the shaft may have become, and moreover should not give it away, as he may live to repent the day. A good iron club is of more value than half a dozen good wooden clubs, as the latter are not at all difficult to replace; an iron club always is.