To take a reasonable amount of time over every shot, and not to run at it like a bull at a gate, is another instance of control. It makes it far easier to take pains when they have got to be taken. There are some whose pace in an important match is quite different from that of their ordinary, workaday rounds. We cannot all play the same pace, but each of us ought to have a more or less constant pace of his own. As Duncan walks up to his ball his waggle seems to be made, and his feet fall naturally into their place almost simultaneously. Mr. Hilton, on the other hand, always very deliberately puts his feet in their place before he begins his waggle. Here are two fine players with entirely different methods. Each employs the one that suits him and neither ever varies it. Duncan must sometimes feel tempted to hang over the shot, Mr. Hilton to walk up and get it over, but each has himself in hand and does not yield to the temptation.

Those of us who have fidgety methods of address know the paralysing sensation of being unable to stop waggling. It assails us particularly in a match when we are feeling strung up, but we may do something to conquer it in our ordinary games. Again, there are few things harder to bear on occasions than to be kept waiting over every stroke by those in front of us. It is not so bad on an habitually crowded green, where golf is always a sedate procession, punctuated by long pauses. What is so exasperating is the single couple of slow players who make all the difference between a tedious round and a clear green. Then is the time to take ourselves by the head and either sit or stand still, without stamping or swearing or chafing, and wait till it is time to strike.

A partner who constantly loses his ball so that we have to hunt for it and are consequently always being passed, a well-meaning ass who will come and talk to us, an innocent lady who walks behind us, a caddie with ill-timed hiccups-how many things there are as to which we can practise the bearing of them with a decent measure of calmness. And be sure that the better we bear them in private, so much less will be the strain when the great day comes. Even the action of picking up our ball and surrendering the hole gives us scope for practising our good resolutions. It may be done in the manner of a philosopher or of a sulky child.

The habit of control is equally valuable whether in match or medal play, but the particular quality of strain to be borne varies with the form of game -or torture-in which we are indulging. In medal play it is longer and more continuous, in match play more acute at certain moments. Some people can endure, may actually enjoy, the one, some the other. In match play, of which we have hitherto been talking, it is the unexpectedness of a shock that often destroys us-a miraculous recovery by the enemy followed by a missed putt of our own-the entire tragedy making a difference of two holes. In a medal it is true that one mistake may be almost fatal, but though we may be frightened of the big bunkers, it is not they that ruin us. Again, though we may give ourselves unpleasant shocks, at least we cannot receive them from any one else. There is no living adversary for us to endue in imagination with an infallibility that he is far from possessing. In a medal round we simply beat ourselves. Much dripping wears away a stone, and continual fussing and fretting, with never a breathing space such as there may be in a match, wears away the golfer. It is nearly always the putting that does it. If you take a walk on a medal day you will see the most ludicrously bad putting. The approach putts are nearly always short, and as to the holing out you would think that half the players were suffering from some painful disease of the wrist-so stiffly do they poke and prod at the ball with never a free wrist amongst them. Sir Walter Simpson declared that the only way to putt well in a medal round was to putt carelessly. It is a paradox with a great deal of truth in it. Much of this terror comes from our playing so few scoring rounds. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt of the scoring card, at least some respect for ourselves. It is very good discipline, too, and if the American amateurs are going ahead of us now, I suspect they owe a good deal to the constant succession of thirty-six or eighteen holes of score play with which their tournaments begin. Anybody, and especially any young golfer who is in earnest about improving his game and his temperament, ought, I am sure, to play as many medal rounds as he can. Let him scour the country for open meetings and never disdain the humble monthly medal. He will be called a pothunter by his more otiose or timorous friends, but he will get his reward.

I do not know that there are many categorical 'don'ts' for a medal player, but I am sure there is one, namely, don't hang about for some time on the tee before your turn comes. Abe Mitchell's dramatic collapse in the third round of last year's Open Championship, when he seemed to have the first prize in his pocket, is now historical. One can never be certain what might or might not have happened, but assuredly Mitchell did himself no good, and perhaps a great deal of harm, by being down at the course far earlier than he need have been, and pottering about on a rather chilly cheerless morning waiting for his number to go up. I think it was Mr. Hutchinson who recommended a 'penny dreadful 'as the best solace for this bad quarter of an hour of waiting, and certainly the mind should be occupied with something that is not golf.

It is not at all a good plan, though it may be better than mere fretful waiting, to go out and look at somebody else playing the first few holes. I am perhaps peculiarly constituted in finding that the watching of others immediately before playing myself produces an utter paralysis of the eye; but in any case it can do no good. If those whom we are watching start ill, what are they but drops in the ocean? We may be sure that some one else is playing well. If they start well they make us think far too much about the stroke or two that we drop in our first few holes.

It is, of course, a stock piece of advice never to give up trying in a medal round. An unexpected three or two towards the end may always transform a bad into a decent score, and apart from that there are days when whole fields are stricken down with absolute impotence, though the weather is fine and there is nothing to account for it but sheer human frailty. It was only last summer that a North Berwick medal was won by a player who, though he had not actually torn up his card, had ceased to take the faintest interest in it some holes before the finish.

There is one difficult decision that often has to be made either in a match or a medal round, namely, whether or not to try a change either of club or of style. The last thing we want to do, if we can help it, is to have experimental notions in our heads on an important occasion. We are likely to do best if we think about nothing but hitting the ball, and not even, as some may say, too much about that. But there are days when we go off some stroke or some club, and feel tolerably certain that the right touch for it is not coming back to us for a while. The commonest and most obvious case occurs on the green. The putter that has been so friendly and comfortable to our hand suddenly becomes estranged, or our feet feel and look as if they were in the wrong place. Sometimes we have in addition a prompting, almost amounting to a heaven-sent instinct, that a particular club or attitude would put us right again. In the last case it is surely folly to hesitate. Let us take the new club or the new stance and be quick about it. There is no time to be lost. It is futile to go on for just one more hole to give the old club a chance of regaining its character. It is very unlikely to do so, when it has once been called in question. 'Doubting in our abject spirit,'we shall go on until our card has come to tearing point or our adversary is four up with six to go, and then it will be too late. Of course the experiment will not always succeed, but if it does not we shall be no worse off than we otherwise should have been. If it does succeed it will probably do so in no uncertain way, for a fresh club in a good temper can for the time being perform prodigies.