However pitiable our frame of mind, there is, no doubt, much virtue in a mouth kept tightly shut. The enemy may see, from unmistakable signs, that we are agitated, and that will do him good; but be sure that we shall do him much more good if we tell him so in words. I once met in a Championship a young gentleman who was so obliging as to lose the first five holes running. He then remarked with a rather elaborate buoyancy, 'I never mind being down at the beginning of a match; in fact I rather enjoy it. Only yesterday I was five down to so-and-so at the turn and beat him.' That was perhaps carrying things too far, but his principle was a sound one, namely, that of not letting me become arrogant by believing him to be down-hearted. There are few things more worrying than an opponent who refuses to 'crack 'when we think he ought to. If we play the first half a dozen holes almost perfectly, and at the end of them have only got a beggarly lead of one, we find the situation distinctly wearing.

This hypothetical golfer with the poetical and imaginative temperament very often finds prosperity harder to endure than adversity. He is not necessarily deficient in courage, and may fight very well when he is down. But when he gets a winning lead, or at any rate has pulled round a match from a most unpromising situation and given himself a real fighting chance, then is the time that we see him collapse. How many matches have been lost just because the player was impatient to be done with the strain of it and would not give the match time to finish itself! I shall never forget a certain match I once played in an Amateur Championship at Sandwich. I was three up with four to go, and at the fifteenth hole my opponent had played short of the cross-bunker in two. I had hit a good tee shot, and it was possible for me to get home in two; but my lie was not very good, and in any case the stroke was a difficult one. Any sane man would have played short, got his half in five, and made himself dormy three, and the match would then in all probability have come quietly and happily to an end at the sixteenth. But I was for the moment insane: went for the carry, was trapped in the bunker, took six and lost the hole. Being thereby unsettled and wanting badly to kick myself, I lost two out of the last three holes, and the match was halved. The moral of the story is not quite perfect, because I scrambled home at the nineteenth hole, but no man ever more thoroughly deserved to be beaten. Infinitely better players are not quite proof against this impatience. In October last Herd and Joshua Taylor met J. H. Taylor and Braid in the final of a foursome tournament at Sunningdale. The golf was extraordinarily good, and Herd and his partner, having been down on the way out, came home in so overwhelming a fashion that they stood dormy two up. On the seventeenth tee, Herd, who had been playing with a controlled fury that was a joy to witness, seemed suddenly to be in a hurry to make an end. Instead of his usual elaborate winding-up process, he took only a very few waggles-and topped the ball into the heather in front of his nose. The match was won by Braid and Taylor at the twentieth hole.

I may give one more illustration of a rather similar mistake, because the incident itself was amusing in rather a cruel way. In the qualifying rounds for the American Amateur Championship at Garden City in 1913, eleven men tied for the last ten places.

These eleven had to play a kind of nightmare musical chairs in order to eliminate one of their number. They all started at the first hole together. Among them were Mr. Jerome Travers, the holder, who ultimately won again, and Mr. Heinrich Schmidt, who had just done remarkably well in our Championship at St. Andrews and was something of a national hero in consequence. The first hole at Garden City calls for a moderately straight drive and a pitch. In front of the green is a deep bunker with a boarded face; beyond the green there is no trouble save some mildly rough grass. Mr. Travers showed what generalship should be on such an occasion. He left it to some one else of the eleven to make the bad mistake, knowing well that one of them would do so, and aimed at nothing but mediocrity. An iron from the tee kept him on the fairway. Then he pitched boldly over the green, chipped back and got a comfortable five. Of the others, who are material to the story, Mr. Schmidt hit a magnificent drive with a wooden club quite close to the cross-bunker. Two players, Mr. Perrin and Mr. Ulmer, were in the rough from their tee shots. Mr. Perrin was discreet and trusted, not in vain, to the mistakes of others: did no more than get out of the rough in two, pitched home in three, and got his five. Mr. Ulmer was impatient, went for the green and plunged into the big bunker. At last it was Mr. Schmidt's turn. The one thing he had to do was to play any kind of a shot over the bunker: the obvious club was a mashie, and if he did overrun the green a little he would still be perfectly safe. What did he do but take a niblick and play a very high cut shot with it ! If the ball had pitched a yard or so further than it did, he would probably have got a 'gallery ' three, but what was the good of a three when a five would do? As it was, his ball just did not clear the bunker. I will draw a veil over the rest of the story. It would take a long time in telling, for nine other players had to hole out before the unhappy Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Ulmer could settle the point. After all sorts of painful adventures Mr. Ulmer holed a very good putt for a six. Mr. Schmidt took seven and lost that game of musical chairs. And he lost it in effect through impatience. He wanted to be close to the hole in two and be done with it, instead of being over the green and so putting off the end of the agony a little longer. I have called it an amusing hole-so it was : but it was also tragic-and the laughter was near to tears.

Against all these and many other temperamental vagaries, the sovereign remedy that is always recommended to us is 'control' - and it is the right one. We cannot hope that the gift of it will suddenly descend on us from above. We must practise it as we would putting, and control does not merely mean refraining from throwing our clubs about, abusing our caddie, and indulging in the 'tut, tut of the eminent divine or the more sulphurous exclamations of the vulgar tongue.' It means, for example, the avoiding of slack, half-hearted shots, and the taking always of a certain amount of trouble, the not running of absurd risks or trying fantastic shots 'just for the fun of it.' In this respect the leading professionals set a wonderful example. If you see Braid playing a foursome with three thoroughly bad players on a course on which he knows every blade of grass, you will notice that he plays every shot with the same serene carefulness that marks him in a championship, studying the line of his putt from the hole if he has any doubt about it. The professional knows that one careless shot begets another, and he cannot afford to get careless. We have not his compelling incentive and may, if we like, allow levity to creep in now and again, but he teaches us how we can improve ourselves if we think it worth while.