PEOPLE who are ignorant of golf, and whose first introduction to the game is to watch a match between two first-class players, usually get the idea, that the accurate hitting of a golf ball is a very simple matter. There seems to be no difficulty about it. The player walks smartly up to his ball, gives a little careless flourish of his club, swings it rapidly backward, and crack! away goes the ball some 150 yards through the air! These same people betray no enthusiasm or appreciation at a quarter shot laid dead, or at the holing of a long putt, and even exhibit some disappointment, that the skill of the players falls so far short of holing out full strokes!

Half an hour with a driver and a golf ball, however, will go a long way towards opening such people's eyes to the realities of the situation. The truth is, that to hit a golf ball accurately, is one of the most difficult and delicate operations in the world, and demands for its successful execution the very nicest adjustment of all the complicated machinery which it calls into play. For consider for a moment the conditions.

First of all the golf club is not a weapon of precision. Its long and tapered shaft, its small head, so far away from the player's eye, with its still more restricted hitting surface, cannot fail to suggest, so soon as it is handled, that it is but indifferently adapted for its purpose. Then the small size of the ball, still further reduced by the nature of the ground from which it has to be struck, and the fact that considerable force must be applied, are all matters that must fill the beginner's mind with doubts and fears. As he proceeds he will find, in addition, that not only must he strike the ball, wherever it lies, on one particular part of its circumference, but that this must be done with a very particular part indeed of the club face, held at an equally particular angle, and that unless these two points are brought thus accurately, in contact, failure will be the result.

It is to the realisation of these painful facts, and the attempts of uninstructed and unobservant beginners to combat them, that our golf links are cumbered, as they are, with golfers exhibiting such perplexing varieties of style. Those weird and monstrous contortions, which so many a golfer's body goes through, in the act of striking, are but the combined result of the painful efforts of earnest but misguided men to adapt the cumbrous machinery to its work, of their consciousness that the instrument is very ill adapted for its purpose, and of their belief in the necessity for compensating, in some way, its unhandiness.

But it is not thus, in fear and ignorance, out of attempts to counteract the length and spring of your golf club, and to defeat the operations of natural law by the convulsions and contractions of your body, that success will emerge. There is a right way to use a golf club. There is a possibility of so handling and swinging the club, that it ceases to feel an awkward encumbrance and becomes as it were part of the golfer's frame, like an added member, which will work, if he be in form, in obedience to his will, as easily and certainly as his hand.

It is to the acquiring of this consistent and harmonious rapprochement between club, hand, and eye that a golfer's style should be built up. One is pretty safe to say that no man ever acquired a good golfing style, who had not had many opportunities of seeing and playing with first-class players. In golf, as in other fine arts, proficiency is only to be attained, by intimate knowledge and study of the best masters. Mere slavish copying of the mannerisms of any one is of course useless, but it is only by close observation of the methods of good players, that one gets an insight to the broad underlying principles, and arrives at the proper golfing attitude of mind. Here, as in the other arts, all the great masters exhibit wide divergencies in the matter of style, and it is impossible, where all are good, to say definitely, that any one style is better than another. It is a matter of taste and opinion. The learner will observe, however, that these divergencies in the styles of good golfers, are merely the natural and proper result of individual idiosyncracies of physique and temperament, and not of any essential difference in the force and accuracy with which they hit the ball. He will be wise then who, in endeavouring to acquire a good style of golf, concerns himself with observing where the styles of good players are in agreement, and who pays no attention to the minor details where they differ. If the root of the matter is in him, his golfing instincts will soon find for themselves adequate and appropriate expression, and may be safely left to take care of themselves.

Yet though it may be difficult, and even impossible, to determine what are the good points in a style of golf, there are certain faults and vices of style, about which it is possible to arrive at a more definite finding, inasmuch as they are never found in the styles of good players, and against these errors the beginner must be on his guard.

It is difficult to understand how such a heresy as "slow-back" was ever seriously entertained and put forward as a nostrum for golfers, opposed, as it is, to all the teachings of experience and the practice of the best performers. If there is one point which strikes the observer more than another, in watching the play of good golfers, it is the decision and rapidity of all their movements. Neither in addressing the ball, nor in the backward or forward swing, is there ever anything of slowness or undue deliberation. The backward and the forward swing are parts of one and the same movement, and should be as harmonious and continuous as possible, and so long as the club is brought forward faster on the ball than it went up, and the balance is preserved, there is not much danger that the club will be swung backwards too rapidly.

The "waggle" or preliminary flourish of the club over the ball, the object of which is the freeing of the wrists and arms, and of ensuring that the club lies properly in the hands, has come to be, if indeed it has not always been, an indispensable adjunct of the good golfer's style. If a man has no "waggle," you may be sure that his play will be lifeless and poor. The "waggles" of good players vary, like the other details of their play, but they all agree in two points - they are never unduly prolonged, and they are usually rather quick and nervous movements. After the completion of the waggle, it is the invariable practice to rest the club-head on the ground, for an instant, before swinging, close behind the ball, in the exact position and at the exact angle, in which the player desires it to return on the ball. This indeed is done at the commencement of the waggle, and may be done also during its progress, for the purpose of enabling the player to find his proper distance from the ball, but it is essential that it should be thus grounded, just before striking. Some players have a habit, when they ground the club, of placing either its toe or its heel opposite the ball, but to do either of these things is to court failure. If either eccentricity be indulged in, or if the club be grounded altogether clear of the ball, the difficulty of the stroke is increased tenfold, as the player starts his swing from a false point, and has to correct his aim during the process of swinging, with obvious diminution both of force and accuracy. It is hardly possible to define accurately, what constitutes a correct golfing swing, and, as before indicated, the only thing that can usefully be done, is to observe the points where the swings of good players agree, and to note where they differ from those of inferior performers. The first thing that can safely be affirmed about the true golfing stroke is, that in its essential nature, it is a swing, and not a hit. This hitting with rigid arms and wrists, which one sees so much of in England, is cricket, and not golf, and although, with a good eye, a man may hump the ball along in this fashion, it is a style that will never lead to excellence, and it is against all the spirit and traditions of the game. The distance which the club is swung backwards is immaterial, provided that it is not taken so far back that the balance is lost, and force is expended uselessly in recovering it. A backward swing that is too short, is apt to be jerky and wanting in power, and it will be found that the swings of the best players are of medium length.