There are tactics through the green as well as on it, and they are likewise open to criticism and suspicion. My partner has outdriven me by a yard or two and the green is a good long way off, guarded by many bunkers. Now, if I am not tolerably confident of getting on to that green, I had better play safe and leave my partner to lash out for England, home, and beauty. What I am inclined to do is to say, 'I'll have a go at it first, partner.' If I play a fine shot, I preen myself accordingly and think myself the backbone of the side. If I fail, I think that I have played for my side and not for myself and all responsibility now rests on my partner : my conscience is clear. But I have deceived myself. It is a far easier and less nerve-racking thing to play the neck or nothing shot and then abuse the other fellow-in thought if not in word. I have not been an honest partner, and when I come to play my next hard single with no one to lean on, and have to do my own 'donkey work,'the lesson will come home to me.

I said that this chapter might develop into a sermon, and it seems to be justifying my prophecy. But I do not want to be too solemn, nor to say that a four-ball match cannot be a good game and a most enjoyable one. It is the ideal game for the third round after tea. Personally I never play a third round. It can also be good fun at other times, if the conditions be reasonably pleasant and the course clear. The four players should be as nearly as possible on an equality. If one partner is much weaker than the other, so that he can only hope to 'come in 'two or three times, it is rather poor fun for him, nor, unless he is of sufficiently strong character to play his own game, will it be good for him. He will be like a poor man struggling to live with rich ones and keep up appearances. He will be tempted to press from the tee and take his iron through the green when his conscience whispers 'brassy.' The matter can be partially put right by strokes. Sometimes three out of the four players are in receipt of various numbers of strokes, which come dropping in all the way round, but they are a bore and a makeshift at best. There are players so oddly constituted that they are quite happy to plod along in the wake of a brilliant partner, their own efforts having no result whatever on the match. Indeed there was once a player, having some 18 of a handicap, who boasted that he and Mr. Hilton had never been beaten in a four-ball match. Most of us, however, are neither so unselfish nor so fatuous. A fine day, a clear green, four good golfers all playing well-there indeed is a four-ball match that is both pleasant and exciting, and may even-I cannot quite forgo my priggishness-be good education. But at the end of it the winners, though they cheerfully chink their half-crowns, are not sure that anything has been proved, and the losers are perfectly certain that it has not.

We now come to the second head of the discourse, the foursome, which is not so popular as it used to be or as it ought to be. There may be some subtle psychological reason for this, connected with the hurried and hectic times in which we live. Leaving this to philosophers to determine, I will suggest two more practical reasons. First, a great many golfers have only a limited time to give to the game and want to make the most of it by hitting their own ball. This is natural enough. Even so if they played the right sort of foursome now and then on their hardly earned Sundays, I do not think they would feel the time ill spent. And at least they might play foursomes on their holidays, when they are inclined to hit their own ball too much and grow stale, so that the change and the comparative rest would be very good for them. Secondly, many people do not like the game because they do not play the right sort of foursome. The average foursome is made up at luncheon after the first round. Two couples who have been playing singles agree to unite. Probably at least one party would prefer another single, but gives in to his companion who is tired. It is difficult to adjust the two sides satisfactorily so as to make a match of it. The game begins with a certain spurious joviality produced by lunch, and often peters out into pure slackness and boredom. After one or two such unlucky enterprises, the player gets the notion firmly into his head that 'a foursome is a rotten game,'and vows he will have no more of it.

A foursome should not be made ex tempore. It should be made and played not gloomily but with a certain formality. If it can be made some days beforehand, so much the better, for thus the pleasure and excitement of it are gradually worked up. The partners should not represent a casual amalgamation ; they should know each other and each other's game well and have confidence therein. They should be a team, and feel something of the mutual reliance, the patriotism, the friendly hostility to the other side which mark a good team game. When golfers can be persuaded into taking part in such a foursome as this, they nearly always enjoy it and declare, with the air of discoverers, that it is a much better game than they had supposed. Whenever at a summer or Easter meeting of a seaside club there is a foursome tournament, it is always the most enjoyable event and the one in which most general interest is taken. Those who have already been knocked out wager small sums on the survivors and forget their own woes in watching the final rounds. That there is more foursome play than there used to be in team matches is due largely to Mr. John Low and Mr. Croome, who have gently but quite firmly persuaded the kind hosts of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society to meet them in foursomes. There are a few annual team matches, of which Sunningdale against Woking is the most old-established, played entirely by foursomes. There are four couples aside and two days' play, so that at the end each pair has played a round against each of the four pairs on the other side. Every match is fought out with the utmost keenness. 'Delenda est Carthago' is the motto. Yet the whole contest is delightfully friendly, and the one fear that haunts each player is that he will have grown too old or too bad to be asked to play next year. Again, there are at least two societies, one in London, and one formed of members of the Honourable Society of Edinburgh Golfers, of which the members meet periodically to dine in order to make up foursomes to be played during the ensuing month.