There is no respect in which good foursome players differ more than in the length and frequency of their consultations. Some seem to have their heads perpetually together: with other couples each man plays his own game quite independently and the two only consult, if at all, on some large strategic question. The first plan will suit one man, the second another. It is a dubious recommendation of the first to say that it has an exasperating effect on the opposition. Let us say rather that if we are going to play foursomes we must steel ourselves to bear it. If possible we had better grin as well as bear it, and properly looked at these elaborate conferences are rather entertaining, with one enemy taking cover behind the ball, the other entrenched behind the hole. Certainly there is a perceptibly enhanced joy in life if 'after all that fuss,'as we say to ourselves, they miss the putt. Moreover, this consultative method is the old-fashioned and traditional one of playing a foursome. There are few more likeable golfing pictures than that in the 'Badminton Library'of Allan Robertson and Tom Morris, two quaint whiskered figures, wooden putter in hand, studying the line of a putt. We praise the element of mutual help and reliance in foursome play ; so we must not get cross with those who live up to our own ideals more fully than we can ourselves.

This much, however, may fairly be said. Those who like plenty of consultation are entitled to ask their partner for advice, and he must do his best to give it; but if, as regards his own shots, he prefers to be left alone, they must be careful not to thrust advice upon him. Advice is a thing to be asked for but not offered. Even a suggestion of taking a particular line or a particular club should not be made unless invited, and such general and purely gratuitous advice as 'Be sure to be up,' or 'Anywhere except above the hole 'is much more strongly to be deprecated. When there is great disparity in skill and experience between the two partners, the better of the two may perhaps give himself a little more licence, but he must go very warily to work and avoid all appearance either of hectoring or patronising.

On many courses there is something like an established custom that the stronger player shall drive at the odd or even holes, as the case may be. As it is the fruit of long experience it is probably sound, but it must not be too blindly followed. As far as possible it is founded on the theory that the better player should take the more difficult tee shots, and especially the majority of the one-shot holes which call as a rule for accuracy. At the same time those important shots, the second shots up to the hole, have also to be taken into account.

The conventional scheme usually assumes that the weaker player is the shorter driver : he generally is so, but not always. If he can drive as far as his partner, another division of tee shots may be preferable. An apparently paradoxical plan, but one for which there is a good deal to be said, is to assign the easier tee shots to the more accurate player. There are some golfers who, given a reasonably wide margin of space, can be relied on to keep the ball on the fairway. If they are given the easy shots, here is a solid foundation on which the side may build their hopes. With luck they will at any rate have seven or eight tee shots out of harm's way. If that accurate player be given the difficult and narrow shots, he may several times be not quite accurate enough and so be just trapped. In such a case a miss is often as good as a mile, and his wilder partner, though going perhaps more crooked, might have been no more expensive to the partnership. The question is perhaps a more difficult one than it used to be, because the number of one-shot holes is greater and our architects guard them more and more fiercely. At Addington, for instance, there are six one-shot holes and they are all odd numbers, so that one partner has a heavy responsibility to bear. Not long ago I watched Taylor, most accurate of all golfers, playing in a foursome on his own Mid-Surrey. There are on that course three holes which can be reached with an iron club from the tee-the fifth, eighth, and eleventh. Taylor drove at the odd holes and so got two of them. At the fifth he was short and bunkered : at the eleventh, by way of compensation, he was over the green. All his tee shots at the longer holes flew straight down the middle of the course and were never in sight of trouble. The illustration is a quaint rather than a convincing one, for Taylor would very seldom do such a thing, and when I am next honoured by having him for a partner I shall certainly urge him to take the short holes. I give it, however, as an example of how accuracy might sometimes be best used by not putting it to the severest test.

Of course in many foursomes the two partners are about equal in strength and skill. In that case it does not greatly matter where they drive. If possible they must find out whether either one of them has a distinct fancy for or aversion from taking either the odds or the evens. If either feels at all strongly on the subject, the other had better yield. So terribly much depends in golf on this 'feeling ' that we are going to hit the ball-or to miss it. And that is worth remembering all through a foursome. Our partner, let us say, proposes to play his own patent full mashie shot at a short hole, and asks us to confirm his judgment. We have been brought up to believe perhaps that a full mashie shot is intrinsically criminal : we may also think that he will not quite get up with it. But we shall be unwise to let him see what is passing in our minds. If he plays his immoral shot he will most likely put the bail on the near edge of the green, and that will be something. If we urge on him the merits of a controlled iron shot he may be up indeed, but also forty yards off the line in a bunker. A man's scheme of approaching, as Sir Walter Simpson has said, is known only to himself and his caddie. Half-shots, push-shots, three-quarter-shots-these are only private and personal labels that we attach to our strokes in our own minds. To another man the words may convey something quite different. Unless we know the man and his iron play through and through we had better let him go his own way, except when he does not know the course and so is palpably at sea about the distances.