They will be played, for the most part, with the cleek, or alternatively the driving-mashie, or also occasionally with the driving-iron. Whether a man plays with a cleek or a driving-mashie is, one may suggest, of no great moment; he can have whichever he fancies. The driving-mashie with its broader face looks the easier to play with, and I should be inclined to recommend it as being the easier club, but that the great majority of good players use the cleek instead. Whichever is the club chosen, it should have a shaft that is fairly stiff, and it should, I think, be moderately heavy. For the hitting of a long ball with an iron club timing seems to be almost more vital than with wooden clubs, and it is easier to time the stroke accurately when you can feel, to some extent, the weight of the head. These observations also apply to the driving-iron.

Now, the player is going with his cleek to hit the ball very nearly as far and as hard as he can. I say very nearly, because if there is any serious doubt in his mind as to whether or not he can get up with the cleek, it will be time for him to take a wooden club. He has not got to begin at the beginning with the cleek, because he has already learned the rudiments of the full swing with his wooden club. The best thing he can do is to reproduce that swing with a cleek, subject to this, that any variation between the two swings is to be in the direction of moderation; the performance is to be gone through on a very slightly reduced scale. This reduction will come for the most part naturally. The club being shorter, the player must stand nearer his ball, and as a natural consequence he will probably put the ball rather further back towards his right foot. Also he may, if he have a mind to it, advance the right foot slightly, since it is a sound working principle that the shorter the shot the more open the stance. Generally speaking, the swing may be a thought shorter and more controlled; the grip, if anything, more firm; and the follow-through a little less luxuriant. Yet these differences are not worth striving after painfully and industriously. All that is worth aiming for is a rather greater feeling of general restraint. It is particularly important not to hurry unduly. The comparatively heavy head of the iron club making the art of timing, as I fancy, rather easier, there is less temptation to hurry than with a wooden club; but if this error is easier to avoid, it is more fatal when it is made. There is a fine deliberateness about the hitting of great iron players, and it is to be cultivated in the longest, as well as the shortest of iron shots. Braid goes so far as to recommend a pause at the top of the swing with iron clubs, and if this be found to encourage deliberateness without dislocating the swing, doubtless it is a good thing.

So far as concerns the fuller shot, the cleek may now be left alone in order to tackle the iron. I spoke of the driving-iron, but many people probably have no club answering to that description, or if they have the club they call it by some other name, medium iron, mid-iron, or, simply and perhaps best of all, iron. Let it be assumed therefore that we are talking of a club that comes somewhere between a cleek and a mashie, that is more lofted than the one and less lofted than the other. Now with this iron a quite full swing is no doubt a thing to be guarded against. I would not say that such a thing should never be done; I believe it is done occasionally by the very best, whatever they may say to the contrary; but it is a thing to be done comparatively rarely. The more lofted is the iron, the more rash it is to take a very full swing, since the ball must necessarily fly high and be at the mercy of the wind. So, just as with the cleek the player was told to exercise a little general restraint over his swing, now with the iron he should be conscious of restraining himself yet a little more. Thus he will attain to something perhaps a little longer than a three-quarter swing, and if he can stick to that he will not do badly. His stroke will still be a swing; not so much so as in the case of a drive with a wooden club, but still a swing. The next stage of his education will bring him to the half-shot, and here, I take it, the swinging element largely disappears, and the hit begins to play a much more prominent part. As to the exact distance from the hole when a man should begin to play a half-shot with his iron, that must naturally and necessarily depend on the man himself. Some people can send the ball with a half-shot practically as far as they can with a full one; others cannot get nearly so far, and they are the more unfortunate, because there is a distinct gap in their armoury of shots that has got to be filled somehow.

FULL SHOT WITH MASHIE-IRON: TOP OF SWING.

[To face p. 84.

Roughly speaking, it may be laid down that the greater the distance that can be brought within the compass of the half-shot the better, but it is a fatal thing to be led by vainglory into attempting to play half-shots beyond one's strength. The man who, when his opponent takes a brassey, himself takes a cleek in order to show his inherent superiority is certainly a fool, but I doubt if he is so lamentable a fool as one who tries to flick the ball up with his wrists, when he knows in his heart that he ought to be swinging the club round his head. The half-shot is essentially a controlled shot in which straightness is everything, and distance, comparatively speaking, nothing. The moment the player feels that he must get his body into it in order to get the distance, he may be certain that he is trying far too much.