When once the regular shots have been mastered, the player's mind immediately turns to learning to execute those more difficult strokes, the command of which stamps one definitely as an expert at the game. For all ordinary playing a woman will get on quite as well if she leaves these alone, and contents herself with playing a straight ball with whatever spin comes to it naturally from the face of the club that she is using. By following such a course, however, she can never hope to rank as a player of the first class; but, before deciding to add to her game these difficult shots, she must be sure that her skill in playing in the ordinary way has become so great that she is ready to progress beyond the grade of a regular club player and to enter the lists as a possible champion of her club or of the group of clubs surrounding her. To attempt to learn the slice, or the pull, or the drive played with back-spin, or any shot requiring special skill, before she has attained complete control of herself and her club is to court confusion and disaster. The mental and physical adjustment necessary for playing ordinary shots can be acquired only after the most painstaking effort and it is one of the most discouraging facts about the game of golf that, just when the player has reached the point where she is beginning to feel really sure of herself, some slight change in her manner of playing will throw the whole combination completely out of gear. To express the same idea in the vernacular of golf, a change in her stance or swing or in her mental conception of the physical motions she is about to make will put her "off her game." It is for this reason that I have, through the pages of this book, so strongly urged the necessity of building up the correct method of playing each shot, so that, once the habit is established, it will not have to be changed and the player subjected to the unsettling effect of abandoning one method in order to adopt a better one.

If, however, the player has reached such a state of perfection that she feels she can safely risk the addition of special strokes to her game, she has before her a group of shots that, when thoroughly at her command, will place her high in the list of women golfers. Which of these shots is the "master-stroke" is a subject on which players disagree, and it is hardly worth while our entering into the discussion of this point. Each shot has its own merits and its own uses and there is no particular advantage to be gained by proclaiming any one of them "master." It would be convenient, however, if players would agree upon a name for the push shot when played with a wooden club. There appears to be no definite name for this shot and it is rather curious that there should not be because it is certainly one of the most important shots of the game. The word "wind-cheater" has been used by some players to designate this stroke and as this term seems as well known and as reasonable as any, I shall adopt it for lack of a better.