I once started a beginner at golf in the way which I here recommend, and I think I shall best serve the purpose which I have in view by describing our procedure in detail. Our first object was to learn the proper action of the left hand and arm. I made my pupil take hold of a club with his left hand only. He had previously been handling it with the air of one anxious to hit. When he was obliged to take his right hand off the leather, a difference in the grip of the left at once showed itself. Previously the fingers had been too far under the shaft; when the left hand was made to act by itself it came naturally to the proper position, so that the finger-tips were not visible to the striker's eye. The moral of this having been pointed out, he was told to take his club back slowly by wrist action only. He immediately bent his wrist instead of turning it. He was duly penitent when it was pointed out to him that he had broken his club-shaft. His error was easily remedied. First he was made to drop his hand a trifle, thus diminishing the angles made by his club with the ground and with his left arm: when left to himself he had got arm and club almost in a straight line. This change in their relative position enabled him to ' support the head of his club,' as the tennis-player is taught by the marker to support the head of his racquet. It then came naturally to him to turn his hand so that the further the motion was continued the more the back of it came into his view. At the start of the movement the toe of his club swung away from the ball and inwards, and on its completion, when the shaft was parallel to the ground, the toe was pointing straight up to the ceiling: this preliminary lesson was given indoors. The movement was repeated until the sensation of its correct performance was familiar to the pupil. He was then permitted to place his right hand on the handle of the club. When he now tried to take his club back, the original error of wrist-bending showed a tendency to reappear, because the right hand wanted to do too much of the work. It was reduced to order promptly by being made to hold so lightly that the club handle, when lifted, fell back against the web at the base of the right thumb.

Having arrived at an idea of the proper way to begin the back lift of the club, a process which required less time than is necessary to write a description of it, we went out to the course. There the learner was provided with an ordinary mid-iron, with which he was asked to hit teed balls at a mark placed less than a hundred yards away. To do this he had merely to pass his club to and fro without using all his power of muscle. In a very short time he learnt to keep his left arm straight, to turn his left wrist properly, to hit through the ball and not at it. I cannot say that all his shots were good; many were topped, others went crooked. But he never perpetrated the complete and disgruntling miss, and from the very start he began to develop a satisfactory follow-through. For a couple of days he confined himself to practising this Fundamental Shot, using different clubs, but never attempting a full stroke with any of them. It was a week before he played a round, though he watched a certain number of matches being contested. In considerably less than a year his handicap was below ten, and I hold that his rapid progress in proficiency was due to the excellence of his start.

It will, I hope, be already apparent what this Fundamental Shot is. It might be called a Half-shot, seeing that it is played almost entirely with the arms; body-turn hardly enters into it at all. It constitutes the whole of a short pitch-and-run approach, and forms the essential beginning of every longer stroke. Let us suppose that it is desired to play a ball by the Fundamental Shot to a point due north. First the left hand and wrist turn the club head in a southwesterly direction, at the same time gradually lifting it until it is a little higher than the player's knee. The toe of the club is then pointing straight up to the sky. The back lift is completed not by bending wrist or elbow, but by allowing the left arm to pass in front of the chest, until a feeling of strain on the left shoulder joint gives warning that the limit of southwesterly movement has been reached. The player's hands will now be about on a level with his waist, his club head with his right ear. I have a strong belief, amounting almost to conviction, that the triceps muscle of the left arm does most of the work during the second half of the back lift. It also starts the downward motion of the club by pulling it back towards the ball. This downward motion is continued by the re-turn of the wrists, especially the left, to their original position. If these motions are correctly executed the face of the club will be presented fair and square to the ball, as it was when it 'addressed' it. It is of the first importance that at the moment when club head impinges on ball the left wrist should be taut almost to rigidity. The club head will then be dragged through the ball by the triceps muscle of the left arm, the right assisting by the thrust of its underhand throw, and will follow on smoothly until its momentum has exhausted itself. It is impossible to say where it will finish, for Finish is a thing entirely different from Follow - through. Follow - through is the natural consequence of a correctly executed stroke; Finish is the device adopted by the individual player to relieve the muscles of hand and arm at. the end of his follow-through. Vardon seems to relax his grip at this moment and to let his club drop gracefully on to his left shoulder. Taylor pulls his hand back to his left thigh. Mr. John Ball's wiry wrists sometimes make his club describe a 'pig-tail' in the air when a specially vigorous drive has caused a more than usually forceful follow - through. Even the follow-through itself may be curtailed by circumstances. When Vardon executes the so-called ' Push-shot' with cleek or iron, his club head often stops within two or three feet of the spot from which it has removed the ball. This is because after striking the ball it went on into the ground, which acts as a shock-absorber, and immediately relieves his wrists of strain. The follow-through is complete, but finish is lacking because there is no need for it.