A set of clubs may be defined as that assortment which the player's caddy carries in a cover on wet days. On fine days the player carries one club himself, either that which he has just used or the one he is about to employ.

I propose here to give a descriptive list of all the clubs which may or may not be in a set.

Nearly every one carries a play club, an instrument consisting of many parts. It has no legs, but a shaft instead. It has, however, a toe. Its toe is at the end of its face, close to its nose, which is not on its face. Although it has no body, it has a sole. It has a neck, a head, and clubs also have horns. They always have a whipping, but this has nothing to do directly with striking the ball. There is little expression in the face of a club. It is usually wooden; sometimes, however, it has a leather face. Clubs, without being clothed, occasionally have lead buttons, but never any buttonholes. Clubs' heads are some black, some yellow, but colour is not due to any racial difference. From this description it will be easy to understand, without a diagram, what a club is like.

Spoons in most respects resemble clubs. Their faces are somewhat more open. There are long, short, and mid spoons, so called according to the length of the spoon.

Brassies differ from spoons and play clubs in that they have brass bottoms which are screwed on.

Irons and cleeks have no sole. Their toes and noses are one and the same thing. They have iron faces. They are never whipped. They have sockets instead of necks. Their mode of locomotion is called 'approaching.' This is a short swinging gait. Sometimes, like play clubs, they drive, but no kind of club ever walks. There are different kinds of irons. A driving iron is used when it is too far to go without doing so. Lofting irons are more light-headed; they look like their work, but do not always do it. Cleeks are cleeks; they are not marked out from their creation for special uses. You may carry a driving and an approaching cleek, and a cleek for putting; but if some one steals your set, or if you die, your putting cleek may be used for driving, etc. etc.

Then there are putters. A good one ought to have the name 'Philp' stamped on it by somebody who must not tell you that he did it himself, or it must have belonged to some one else before you got it - either an old golfer who is dead (no matter whether he was a good holer-out or not) or else to a professional. No golfer with any self-respect uses a putter which he has bought new out of a shop for four shillings.

The niblick is too vulgar-looking for description in a polite treatise like this. He is a good fellow, however, ever ready to get you out of a hole.

These are the ordinary clubs, but there are many more. There are clubs with vulcanite heads, with german silver faces, with horn faces, clubs with bamboo shafts, clubs with cork grips. Old gentlemen use baffy spoons.

The 'President' is a niblick with a hole in it, which might be a very good niblick if it were not a president. It is called a president because the hole makes it clear-headed.

There are putting irons which are not irons but putters. People who putt badly use these, and are happy, although they only put it out of their power ever to putt well. There are putters made like croquet mallets, and there are perfectly upright ones. The latter are of no use to corpulent persons, as they cannot see the ball. Even the emaciated hole-out better without them.

Old-fashioned irons look like the missing link between a meat cleaver and a kitchen spoon. They all originally belonged to somebody's grandfather, and are only now to be found in glass cases or in the sets of very bad players, who, according to whether they had a golfing grandfather or not, expiscate or purchase them. The player, when getting this instrument from his caddy, does not ask for an iron in the usual way. He says 'Give me my heavy iron,' in a tone which causes the inexperienced adversary to despair. In reality, using an old-fashioned iron is the last expedient of those who cannot loft a ball with anything else. Even this expedient often fails, but defeat is at least avenged by the destruction of the green.

In addition to ordinary and extraordinary, there are special clubs (most of my own invention), few of which have as yet come into general use.

The automatic self-adjusting tee is a simple little contrivance whose name explains it. It prevents toeing, heeling, and topping, correcting errors in the swing of the club, acting somewhat in the same way as the compensating balance of a watch. It is a convenience to attach the automatic tee to your button-hole by a string which can be used to lift it to your hand after each shot, just as the organ-man jerks up his monkey when about to move on.

The portable platform for the feet, when the stance is bad, cannot be recommended. A spade to level the ground is more easily carried, and equally efficacious.

The 'Dynamite' is a very powerful weapon. It is a club in the face of which is inserted a small cartridge which explodes when the ball strikes it. With this club a good driver has been known to get past the long hole at St. Andrews in one shot. Loading for each drive is, however, so inconvenient that the dynamite has not come into general use. Besides, the trouble, the expense, and danger connected with it are so considerable as to make it unpopular. It would be rash to start on a round without a surgeon to carry the clubs, and surgeons of course charge more than ordinary caddies. If dynamites came into general use the rules of golf would require to be slightly altered. As they stand at present, holes would occasionally be lost because the player could not come up to time. Ten minutes is scarcely enough to allow for trepanning, which would often be necessary, as the cartridge frequently fails to go off till the club has reached the level of the head. With a dynamite it is safer to jerk than to take a full swing. The author does not recommend the dynamite. It reduces golf too nearly to the level of grouse driving or covert shooting.

The putter scale is a light iron tripod, into which you adjust an ordinary putter, placing the tripod so that the head of the putter rests behind the ball. On the tripod there is a scale showing the distance the putter is to be drawn back and let fall for each length of putt. Of course the player has to guess the said length for himself.

We now come to the subject of golf balls, of which, as of clubs, there are many kinds - not, however, like the clubs, to be used for different shots. There are twenty-sixes to twenty-nines, guttas, eclipses, black, white, and red balls, and the magnet ball. The numbers twenty-six to twenty-nine are purely sentimental. White balls are used when there is neither snow nor daisies, red ones when there is either, black ones by the poor and the stingy. Black eclipses are less objectionable than black guttas, for at least they are round. With a black eclipse one is allowed to pretend that the love of money is not the root of the evil. The magnetic ball is one of my own many inventions. It is simply an ordinary ball containing a small magnet which enables the player to hole-out with great precision, the iron in the hole (the 'tin,' it is called) attracting the magnet. For driving north the magnet ball is very good, but in driving cast or west some allowance must be made for the skid of attraction. During a thunderstorm the carry of these balls is really astonishing.

'But,' cries the beginner despondingly,' must I buy all these things?' He certainly may if he choose. Like some patent medicines, if they do no good, they will do no harm. The usual course, however, for the tyro is reluctantly to be persuaded to buy a cleek and a driver, and to get the loan of a ball. This is sure to decide- him to go in for the game, and he buys a full set - namely a driver, a long spoon, a mid spoon, a short spoon, a cleek, an iron niblick, a putter, if he goes to a club-maker. If he buys a friend's spare clubs, they will be a more necessitous-looking lot, the shafts either twisted or too thick to twist. This does not much matter, as the whole set will be broken several times over before the tyro begins to develop notions of his own. With an old coat, nailed boots, and some balls, he is ready to start. Gloves for blistered hands, pitch to make the gloves grip, sticking-plaster for frayed fingers, a knife for sharp nails, elastic wristlets for started sinews, may be purchased either at once or as the necessity for them arises. As soon as the tyro is admitted to a club, it is his duty to buy a golfing umbrella for the use of the members.

Bad players always carry a very large set, but the converse of this proposition is not true, many good ones doing the same. Still, there are certain inferences to be drawn from sets of clubs. One need never be afraid to give a shade of odds to a player who carries three spoons. It is safer not to bet with a man who has none. Why bad players carry all these spoons I have never been able to make out. Perhaps it is to encourage themselves with - to use and discard as each in rotation proves itself ineffectual. It is certain that one or other becomes for the time being favourite. It is the best club he ever had; he can drive further with it than with a play club (a doubtful advantage, one would think. Would a man praise a putter which sent a two-yard putt three past the hole?). The largeness of a bad player's set is usually due to excess of wooden clubs. Approaching, being all a fluke, he leaves to chance. The good player with notions, on the other hand, runs riot in irons and cleeks, mashies, niblicks, and putters, each of which is supposed to have specialties in the way of loft, length of carry, etc. etc. That constantly changing does not ruin his play is because of the extra care needed to hit accurately. The man of one iron is apt now and then to miss from too implicit trust in the familiar face which has never deceived him for many a round.