Flattery is still more dangerous than grumbling. Under its influence a level match for shillings maybe followed by a round for pounds, giving odds. Out of the hundred shots more or less you have made in the round, the flatterer easily finds five good ones with which to turn your head. With putts especially he will succeed. A very straight or a very long drive may be used against you; but a few good putts are still more dangerous in the mouth of a match-maker. The drives - unless utterly given over to vanity - you know to be exceptional. But putts! who doubts that on his day his putting is remarkable?

The adversary who outdrives us is not difficult to deal with. If he does so on the average, he naturally gives odds, a man's driving being- the usual standard by which his game is measured. If it is only when he hits them that he drives far, he is still easier to deal with. Those who hit occasional screamers, over-estimate their own game even more than the rest of golfers.

Judged by his apparent merits, the most dangerous man is he who is exceptionally good within the hundred yard radius. To estimate the comparative efficiency of men's driving is easy, but near the hole casual observation is quite deceptive. The faculty for occasionally sending the ball high in air to land dead causes a man to be overestimated. He who, time after time, holes from a yard and a half is not necessarily a permanently dangerous adversary. It may be his own bad putting which so often renders these efforts necessary. If you are puzzled at So-and-so constantly winning, the key to the enigma will probably be found in the inconspicuous regularity with which he performs the apparently simple duty of holing in three off his iron. His approaches are not brilliant perhaps. It may even be that many of them are scuffled along the ground; but a close observation will show that they are invariably straight. Nobody is oftener past the hole than short, but the deadly player will have a good average of approaches finishing on the far side. In short, an adversary who does not seem to be playing his short game at all well, may be winning every hole because each approach is laid within fifteen yards and each long putt within fifteen inches - a very simple matter, which rouses no astonishment, but is perfect play nevertheless.

In match play, as a rule, it is the finish, in medal play the start, which is most exciting. In the latter, one feels how dismal it would be to drag round the links with an incubus of ten or twelve strokes too many for the first three holes. After one has warmed to the work, it is not so crushing, slowly, surely, imperceptibly to tail off. Successful medal play, however, calls for more nerve and patience than match play. So long as our card remains good, each shot is as important as the first, and as we near home with a good record the excitement becomes intense. Even from the last tee a carefully compiled and creditable card may be driven to the winds.

Some men give a very good account of themselves on medal days by playing a hold, gambling game, which either comes off, or requires three figures to record it. For him who is always there or thereabout, the medal round is too trying to be pleasant. Each shot is a solemn and difficult interview, on which depend momentous issues. After each there is a moment for thanksgiving, a moment of relaxation, a short walk, and to business again - to the business in hand. There should be no thought of anything else. The good medal-player is no Lot's wife, ever adding up his card to see what is behind him. When he has to drive, he drives. Approaching, he does not see himself in the bottom of the hole in three; he only sees the ball which has to be struck. Visions of the calamities of missing do not flicker along the line of his putt. His round is dismal business, without reflection or anticipation.

Some golfers advise great caution in medal play. They advise to drive gently, to play round bunkers, to play putts for dead. It is not likely that the cautious medal-player will have to tear up his card, or that there will be any double figures on it, but he may easily have a worse total than if there were one or two, whilst anything better than a moderate score is improbable. An easy shot is as uncertain as a pressed one. A flabby muscle is as little under control as an overstrained one. To play round a bunker is to give yourself leave to top - a permission likely to be taken advantage of, for the golfer's body hates to hit and loves to foozle; whilst his game is easily insulted by being made to go round, or play short of, a bunker, it ought to be allowed to try to carry. Besides, a bunker is not necessarily a very terrible place when you are in it. The player in one is as likely to win the hole as his adversary thirty yards further back on grass. Especially when the bunker is within forty yards of the hole is caution folly. A cupped ball on the grass is as likely a contingency as a very bad one in the bunker. The bunkered ball will likely be got out, whilst the same pusillanimous spirit which played the other shot may likely put it in. Besides, why should the bold player get in? To hit clean with a driver is not more difficult than to do so with an iron. In short, the bold game saves a shot if successful, and does not necessarily lose one if too daring. That timid play is a mistake will be made apparent on a moment's reflection to any one who has ever entered for a scoring competition. He will remember having thought, ' If I go in there I am done for,' - how he has gone in, got out, and only at most lost a shot. Of course this argument only applies to ordinary bankers. On every green there are some terrible ones - unfair ones, in which the punishment does not fit the crime. These must be avoided.

It is in putting, more than in any other part of the game, that the would-be medal winners, and those who enter to see what they will do, are apt to fail on medal days. Bad driving, with a turn of luck, may lose you little or nothing; but bad putting runs up a score that you will only reveal to inquiring friends after one or two askings and some explanation as to what bad luck you had. Every one starts for a medal a little shaky, needing something to picket his mind to, so that it may not wander away into realms of dread. In driving, one can prevent stray thoughts by employing the mind in keeping the eye on the ball; in approaching, one can deafen himself with 'Be up;' in putting, all formulae but make us more erratic. Any kind of reflection or moral resolve seems to put the delicate machinery out of gear. Resolve to be up, and you are too far past; to be dead, and you are short; to be in, and you are out of holing. Good putting grows like the lilies. In match play it is vigorous when the sun is shining, and fades a little as the prospect grows dark. But the atmosphere of medal play is either too hot for it or too cold. One wants it to save shots for the future at one time, at another to retrieve the faults of previous play. To putt well on a medal day, one must be careless; - advice easily given, but difficult to follow until our card is hopelessly beyond the reach of human aid.

Of Match And Medal Play 32

' We may outrun By violent swiftness that which we run at, And lose by over running.'