There is one more general consideration, which I should perhaps have mentioned apropos of the caddie. There is nothing that takes the fun and the virtue out of practising like continual hunting for balls in the rough. So, if we do not take a caddie, let us practise with old balls unless we are so rich that we do not mind losing new ones. At any rate let us not look too long for the lost ones, but rather regard them as a modest price to pay for our improvement, soon to be recouped by winning other people's half-crowns. Mr. Hilton tells us that the Hoylake caddies, when they found balls lying about the links in the morning, used to know that Mr. Macfie had been out practising in the twilight on the night before. Mr. Macfie was a great practiser and made himself a great golfer. Here is one very small respect out of the many in which we may try to imitate his example.

And now let us take the first kind of practice and go out to wrestle in prayer with that club which has been betraying us. Incidentally, to take out a club with which we feel confident is not practice at all. It may be agreeable exercise, but it is not* practice and it is not wise. We cannot hit better than well, and the devil of theorising may easily enter into us, shake our confidence, and make us hit worse. Besides, we have not got such an endless reserve of good shots that we can afford to waste them. The time will come again when we are off with the club which is now behaving so well. We cannot postpone it by hitting good shots now, and we may precipitate it. Even when we do resolve to take out a peccant club, we are inclined to take a well-behaved one also in order that now and again we may play just one shot with it for the sake of cheering variety. Let us put that favourite club behind us in the locker, for it is a temptation of the Evil One. I have often yielded to it. I have gone out to play half-iron shots and taken a spoon with me. When I have lost several balls, my hands are sore, my legs tired and darkness is fast coming on, it turns out that I have smacked happily away with the spoon, which I could do well enough, and forgotten all about the iron shots that were crying out for practice.

So, after this digression, out we really go this time with our one club. Generally, as I said, it is good to have a mark and to practise where there is enough trouble to make reasonable straightness essential. But if our one club is a driver or brassy, and if we are in a really bad way with it, I think we had better allow ourselves a good wide open space to begin with. This ought to give us a little confidence :

Practice: its Pains and Pleasures 109 at the worst it should lessen the temptation to remove the eye too soon in order to see where the ball has hidden itself. All golfers more or less suffer from claustrophobia, but very few from agoraphobia. The more room there is, as a rule, the straighter they go, because they hit the more freely. If we have grown frightened we have most probably grown cramped, and freedom of hitting is what we want to regain. But we must not stay in our open ground too long. If indulged in too freely it is an enervating cure. As soon as some symptoms of returning health are discernible we ought to move to new and narrower pastures. When we feel very strong indeed, a 'long-short' hole, one that calls for a full wooden-club shot to reach the green, may be attempted. There is no mark so good as an actual green to test us thoroughly.

It may be that we go out with our minds a blank, in a state of equable despair, ready to try anything and everything, but more probably we have got a theory. Tea, let us say, has cheered us up, and we think we know what we have been doing wrong. Very well, then ; let us first try the new specific, for we shall not be happy till we have. If it works, well and good. It should stand the test of a certain number of shots. If it does, that ought to be good enough for us. Even though it is only some little trick which cannot really get to the root of the matter, we had better rest content. Whatever it is, it has given us back some of our lost confidence, and if we do not think too much about it and exaggerate it (a fatally easy mistake about which I could write a whole volume), home is the best place for us.

Possibly however, and indeed probably, the specific proves a failure. If another suggests itself we may try that one too. If that fails, we must set ourselves down to careful laborious plodding with the mind fixed only on hitting the ball. Nine times out of ten indeed this would be the most sensible course to begin with, but a fellow feeling forces me to make some concession to the theorist. 'Aim more carefully 'was the doctrine of Sir Walter Simpson, at once the most delightfully amusing and unspeakably depressing of golfing writers. There is nothing to beat it. We may think of 'slow back' perhaps, and 'Keep your eye on the ball,'but the main thing to say to ourselves is just 'Hit the ball.'Let us thump and plod and thump again. It will not always cure us, but in many cases it will do wonders. A deep-seated disease of long standing may be too much for this general cure, but in that case the patient had much better consult his professional adviser. I am assuming rather a transient ailment. If and when we have thus thumped ourselves into something like decent form, a difficult point arises: Are we to accept our improvement without inquiry as a gift of Providence, or are we to try to discover wherein the improvement lies? The cynic would say, 'Go home and be thankful'; the theorist would verify with passionate precision the exact position of every limb. It is a difficult question, and I am disposed to take refuge in a compromise. Vardon has said somewhere that when a man is playing well he should 'take a sly look at himself.' It is a good phrase. We must not look this gift-horse of Providence too closely in the mouth, but if, without too impious probing, we can find out something useful, let us make a mental note of it. Only we must not -this with terrific emphasis-'imitate ourselves,'to quote Sir Walter again. That mental note is only for reference in case of fresh backsliding.