Here is the crucial point. He will probably be persuaded to imitate the long swing of his professional adviser. If he does so, he is almost certainly lost. There are exceptions even to this rule, but generally speaking, no man or woman whose muscles have become set, should ever attempt a full swing until it comes of its own accord.

Begin with what your professional calls a half shot. That is to say, let the arms go back just as far as possible without making a break in the motion. The club must swing backward and forward as smoothly as the pendulum of a clock. The left wrist and elbow should be kept almost in a straight line, and only the right wrist and elbow should be bent as the club moves backward. Practice this stroke until you can hit the ball accurately, and you will be astonished how far it will go with only a very small expenditure of force.

Your young golfer, however, is a very ambitious individual, and he will not be content to forego his cherished St. Andrews swing unless he is given good reasons. He will generally argue that form must be acquired at any cost, and confront me with my own statement that it is better to miss the ball in the right way than to hit it in the wrong. First, then, let me ask him whether it is not far better to achieve a half swing than no swing at all.

He must remember that driving is entirely a matter of swing. As soon as he begins to hit at the ball he is hopelessly ruined. He must at all costs learn to sweep the ball away as if it were an object of no weight at all. Consequently, if he can learn a true half swing, he is at least on the road to grace; whereas the contortions which he goes through in acquiring what he imagines to be the proper St. Andrews style do not constitute a swing at all, and he will probably spend months and months attempting to sandpaper it down into something like a regular sweep. In the meantime his less ambitious brother in golf will have outstripped him with ease; not, be it understood, in the matter of score - for that is of no importance - but in the effectiveness of his play and the evenness of his swing".

Of course it is not intended that the late beginner should not in time develop a real St. Andrews swing. The only question is, How can he do it most easily? When he has played long enough and watched the motions of all the first-class golfers he may come across, he will gradually find his swing lengthening out without any conscious effort on his own part and without any break in the motion.

A golfing swing is rather like the human voice. There is a definite break which years of practice only can smooth away. In training the voice the teacher develops both the lower and the upper register, and in so doing works one into the other so as to conceal the break. The teacher in golf - at least, where he has to deal with adult pupils - should adopt just the contrary method. He should develop the lower register only, and go on extending it until it gradually glides into the upper register without encountering the break at all.

That is the theoretical reason for encouraging the half swing. Fortunately, in this case the practice bears out the theory.

At the present moment three of the best American players, according to public form, are A. H. Fenn, A. Tyng and H. Harriman. There are several younger players who are quite as good now, and probably will very soon pass the older contingent in the race. But these college boys, like Betts, Reid, Terry, Walter Smith, Bayard and many others, hardly enter into the present discussion. They have learned the game early enough in life to imitate the regular professional swing without danger.

Of the older golfers, however, Fenn and Tyng have certainly earned the right to be considered in the front rank, and Harriman I class with them, not because his record is so extensive, nor because he happened to defeat Tyng in playing for the amateur championship, but because his style strikes me as being the best exposition of the method which ought to be followed by adult beginners.

Turn to the photographs of these players, and you will observe that not one of them has a full swing, Fenn and Tyng being most remarkable in this respect. But you will also see that in each case the stroke is followed through to the finish. Thus the head of the club is kept traveling as long as possible in the line of the ball's flight.

Another point will strike you if you look carefully at the different illustrations: You will see that in Harriman's case the hands go back very nearly as far as in the pictures of the Scotch players. And yet the casual observer would never suspect Harriman of having a full swing; which goes to prove that the eye is often deceived, and that what looks like a very long swing is in reality not so very much longer than the stroke which I recommend to the beginner.

The argument, moreover, does not apply to American players alone. In the first rank of English and Scotch golfers it would be hard to find a single expert who did not learn the game as a boy. But among those who began later in life, the best are certainly those who use little more than a half swing. Two good instances come readily to mind: Mr. Oswald, who was last year captain of the St. Andrews golf club, is one of the steadiest players on any links. He is not absolutely first-class, but there are very few players who can give him odds with safety; yet in driving, his hands hardly reach the level of his shoulder. Mr. Walter De Zoete is another and even more extraordinary case in point. He plays with an easy half swing, and he has passed the age when men expect to be pre-eminent in sports; yet there is hardly a golfer, young or old, who can beat him over his native heath at North Berwick in Scotland.