"Driving is an Art"

" Well begun, half done." This is a maxim that has a particular application to the art of driving well. While proficiency in effective approaching and putting is undoubtedly essential to a low handicap game, long and correct driving is as balm to the soul of the golfer. There is no degree of gratification so acute as that derived from the sight of a long low straight ball soaring defiantly over the grim obstacles that wait with menacing jaws to entrap the victim of an ill-wrought stroke; and consistently successful play cannot be maintained on all sorts and conditions of links without steady driving. The above-quoted maxim is doubly suitable here: first, as to the general study of the game as a whole; then as to the progress of each round hole by hole. A weak drive calls for an additional effort (usually with penalties attached to it) to recover lost ground; and the difficulties thereby entailed are increased on well-planned courses with a scrupulous care that, to the unfortunate player, suggests the employment of a fiendish cunning. A good drive, on the other hand, super-induces a psychological effect that is of tremendous importance to the rest of the game. The stroke itself, is, to the uninitiated spectator, one of comparative ease, especially when made by an expert player. It is, therefore, indispensable at the outset that the ardent beginner (the lukewarm trifler is unworthy of notice) should give the most earnest and careful attention to this particular stroke.

The choice of the learner's club is not to be lightly made. It is quite safe to say that he should start with one that has no special personal value attached to it (not an heirloom, for example). The old-fashioned plan was to put a cleek into the hands of the beginner. With this he can do much damage to the turf, and moreover, it is not a wooden club.

He should get the professional or a friend to lend him (unconditionally, if he can) an old brassey with a stiff shaft well suited to his height, or, better still, an aluminium baffy. The latter is somewhat shorter than the ordinary wooden club, and his control over it will therefore be greater.