The organization of the game is also a peculiarity of its growth in the States. Golf has been played in Scotland from time immemorial, and yet there has never been a governing body which has had anything more than a prescriptive right to control the national laws and practice of the game. The committee of the Royal and Ancient Club at St. Andrews has gradually assumed the reins of government, not from any desire to usurp authority, but simply because no other method of control seemed practicable. If there had been as many clubs in England twenty-five years ago as there were in Scotland, and if the interest in the game had been at all evenly distributed, there would have been no difficulty in instituting some kind of national administration. But as it was, there were few good players in Great Britain who were not members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and it would have been manifestly absurd, or at least very unnecessary, to suggest that the St. Andrews committee was not perfectly competent to do all that was required in the way of government.

Moreover, national associations have never been recognized as the ruling principle of English sport. The government of the game of golf having been gradually thrust upon the St. Andrews club, it grew more and more impossible to organize any national committee in the face of the conservative element. The case of the Mary lebone cricket club was cited to support the rule of a single club as against the control of a national association. And so, in one way and another, the constitution of the game as it at present exists became crystallized. A step in the direction of a national committee was made some ten years ago when the Hoylake Club instituted the amateur championship tournament, but the time had gone by when the organization of such a committee upon democratic lines was possible. In the first place, only a few of the many clubs in the country were represented; and secondly, the delegates sent to choose the course for the decision of the next championship, were powerless to assume authority upon any other subject.

And so, for better or for worse, the St. Andrews Club has become the M. C. C. of golf, and all hopes of a general committee seem at present exceedingly remote - except, indeed, on such terms as would rob the institution of half its value as a representative body.

It must not be imagined for a moment by those who know golf only as it is played in America, that this apparently hap-hazard kind of government has been detrimental to the development of the game. There are two distinct sides to the question; and it may be asserted with great safety that the game would have suffered enormously in the past if the influence of St. Andrews had not been predominant. There is no game in the world which admits of so much ignorance upon the part of its players as golf. And if, ten or fifteen years ago, men who had only pursued the gutta percha in the wilds of Tooting-Bec or the Cowley marshes at Oxford had been allowed the same vote in the control of the game as the first-class players of St. Andrews, the results would have been most disastrous.

At the same time, golf has now reached a point in England and Scotland, where the mists of ignorance have been widely dissipated, and the moment has arrived when the formation of a national association would in all probability be most beneficial. But in the meantime St. Andrews has the power, and why should she relinquish it? Philanthropic bimetallists are fond of asking England to abandon her gold standard. Those who make a similar request of St. Andrews find themselves in much the same predicament. Their theory is excellent, but what inducement have they got to offer? There is the dilemma; and we have to thank our stars of good fortune that we had no such difficulty to face when the game became popular in America. The idea of the national association had become fixed in the minds of all sportsmen in this country by its success in other branches of athletics, and there was no traditional influence to overcome.