When I was in America the first time the fact was very much impressed upon me that in many ways the young American player was severely handicapped in comparison with the British player. First, on account of the comparative inaccessibility of the American courses, he has not the same opportunities of filling in an idle hour with a club and half a dozen balls; moreover, when he gets to the links the facilities for practicing are not nearly so great. Most of the leading British players were brought up as boys literally within a stone's throw of one or other of our famous seaside courses, and anyone acquainted with these courses can readily understand what a great advantage this is.

But where there is a will there is a way, and if a player is blessed with sufficient enthusiasm i American Amateur Champion 1907, 1908 and 1912. Declared by Mr. Hilton to be the best putter he has ever seen and that necessary ingredient, patience, he can always create opportunities for practice, even on the most circumscribed of inland courses. The mistake the young player invariably makes is to practice the shot at which he is comparatively proficient. If he is a fine driver he will take out a wooden club and drive ball after ball with it. The result is no doubt most satisfactory and gratifying to himself, but it is very doubtful whether it has been of any service to him whatever. He was already aware of the fact that he was a master of his wooden clubs, so there would seem little object in going out merely to confirm this fact. The shots a man should practice are those which he cannot usually play, the shots in the playing of which he ordinarily feels a certain lack of confidence.

Harold H. Hilton.

Winner British Amateur Championship 1900, 1901,

1911; American Amateur Championship 1911;

British Open Championship 1892, 1897

Jerome D. Travers.

It may be that he will never really conquer that particular shot, but on the other hand he may have gone a little way to remedy a marked weakness in his game. I hold the opinion that thoughtful practice of any description is sure to bear good fruit in the end; it may not even teach the player what he should do, but it may have the effect of impressing upon his mind what he should avoid.

The true secret of successful golf is accurate iron play. A man cannot be a really first class player unless he is more or less a master of all manner of iron clubs. Deadly accurate approaching will make up for many defects in wooden club play, and, in consequence, it is the iron clubs above any other with which a player should practice. I am not going to say that it is necessary for a player to be a complete master of every class of iron shot and to have intimate knowledge of the correct way of playing them, but I will say that it is absolutely necessary for a player who is anxious to attain any great measure of success to have a good command of his iron clubs.

By this I mean that he should be able to regulate the swing of the club much as he pleases. Now there are two natural shots with an iron club; one is with a full, free swing, hitting the ball much as one would hit it with a wooden club; the other is the short, jerky species of approach shot which is played with a comparatively stiff wrist and forearm.

The tyro, if presented with an approach to play, will employ either one or other of these methods; they are the natural strokes with an iron club. There are many other forms of iron shots, however, which are the result of development, the strokes which lie in between the full shot and the stiff wristed approach; they are the key note to successful approaching and are also the most difficult strokes in the game thoroughly to master. They represent the secret of being able to control the club on the upward swing to any length the player may wish.

I do not think that it comes natural to any golfer to play these half and three-quarter swing iron shots; they are to my mind the result of after development and I know one or two amateur players who have risen to prominence without ever mastering them in any way. Yet when these men come to really serious competitions their lack of such knowledge invariably proves their undoing. To be a successful first class player, a man must have a comprehensive knowledge of the correct manner in which to play these half and three-quarter strokes. I speak somewhat feelingly on the subject, as I served a long apprenticeship in the art of learning how to control the club in [the upward swing.

I It was a shot which did not come in any way [naturally to me as I infinitely preferred to play ■all my iron shots with a full swing of the club, land could do so, moreover, with a goodly degree of accuracy; so it is possible I might have remained content with this method had not had an object lesson always before my eyes in the person of John Ball, who seemed able to control both his swing and the trajectory of the ball. I came then to the conclusion that if one man could do it there seemed no reason why another should not be able to, so I proceeded to learn the art.

It all came to me in good time; the trouble and labor were not wasted, and I have never regretted the trials I had to go through in those earlier years. Once you have attained the knack it will never desert you, and to-day I find myself possibly a better player with an iron club than I have ever been in my career owing to the fact that I have never ceased to practice.

A player may play himself quite stale by continually practicing with wooden clubs and there is really no necessity of doing so; but with iron clubs it is a different matter. To my mind a player cannot practice too much with them, and the more he practices the shots in the playing of which he is admittedly weak the better for him.

I am no great believer in the practicing of any form of full shots. In the first place, it is trying work physically and muscles are apt to become weary and tired, and toward the conclusion of the task one is almost sure to keep foundering the ball through pure physical inertia. Indeed, one often hears a player who has gone out to try a wooden club remark on his return, "I commenced driving beautifully with this club, but toward the finish I couldn't hit a ball with it."

The failure was in no way the fault of the club; it was due to his not realizing that the continued hard exercise in playing full shots one after another had tired his muscles. Driving is a harder physical strain than many are apt to imagine.

! Although it is advisable that a player should have good command of every class of iron shot, there is really only one of these shots that is absolutely essential, the playing of which he should have at his finger ends, and that is the lofting approach. It is a class of shot which can be adapted in some form or other to every approach which a player is called upon to negotiate. The power to play the low running approach is often an extremely useful asset for a player to have in his bag, as there are occasions when the playing of such a stroke is a much safer procedure than attempting to manipulate the shot by the aid of the high lofted ball.

But there are many occasions when it is quite impossible to play this running approach. On the other hand there is hardly an approach to be found which cannot be played by lofting the ball into the air with spin imparted to it. In consequence, it is absolutely necessary that a player who wishes to make his mark should have a certain degree of mastery over this stroke. He must be in possession of the knowledge of how to pitch a ball up to the hole and at the same time impart at least a fair degree of spin to it; it is the most useful stroke in the game.

The man who is a master of this shot need have no fear as to his approaching; he can employ this class of shot for literally every approach he is called upon to play. A very efficacious method to employ in the task of mastering this shot is to take out an iron club which has a more or less straight face, and try to play comparatively short pitching approaches with it over a comparatively high obstacle. The result may not be altogether satisfactory to the executant, in that he may find that more failures than successes come his way, but by degrees he will become quite proficient in getting the ball to rise quickly with a straight faced iron.

It may not seem altogether a wise proceeding to practice shots which one will never be called upon to play in a match, as no one would think of ever attempting to play a short lofted approach with this kind of a club. On the other hand the fruit that this somewhat unusual form of practice bears is in the fact that it is teaching the player the art of imparting spin to the ball; when he comes to play the shot with a lofted club he will find that there is not the slightest difficulty in giving the ball almost as much spin as he wishes to. After practicing with a straight faced club, the playing of the shot with a normal approaching iron will appear simplicity itself.

From the very beginning of my career I have not found the slightest difficulty in imparting spin to the ball with an iron club. The assumption is that there must be some peculiarity or idiosyncrasy in my style which is adapted to the playing of this shot, and there may be some truth in this assumption. I have an idea, though, that any such peculiarity is not natural, but the result of unconscious development due to the fact that when playing as a mere boy I was the possessor of just one single approaching club, a species of maid-of-all-work, with which I had to manipulate all manner of difficult shots. From a practical point of view I should no doubt have done much better with a more complete set of iron clubs, but there can be no shadow of doubt that the apprenticeship I served with this single club taught me much of iron play, and I cannot but think that the fewer clubs a boy has in his bag the better for him, as it teaches him the difficulties of the game.

In conclusion: when practicing it is not wise to keep playing the same class of shot for too long a period, particularly if it is one which requires any degree of physical force in the playing thereof, as there is more physical strain in the making of a stroke at golf than one is apt to imagine by the experience he has of playing in matches where there is a rest between strokes and consequently the player does not realize the strain.